PM Modi puts Cabinet colleagues on Yoga Day duty

Buoyed by the success of the United Nations' recognising June 21 as the International Yoga Day and huge participation in last year's Yoga Day celebrations at the Rajpath in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked all his Cabinet colleagues and ministers to commemorate Yoga Day with the people by fanning out across the nation.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has released a list of 50 ministers with their assigned locations, where they will participate in the Yoga Day celebrations on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told ANI, "All ministers of the central movernment will participate in the International Yoga Day functions in various districts across the nation on June 21. An environment is being created for sensitising people about the benefits of good health."

Trashing criticism by various political parties, Naqvi said, "I think there should be no politics on health. The people, who are indulged in politics of health, are politically bankrupt. Thus, at least, they must perform yoga."

The list of 50 leaders includes even towering names like Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh (Lucknow), Finance Minister Arun Jaitley (Mumbai), Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu (Delhi), Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar (Kanpur), Union Road transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari (Nagpur) and Union HRD Minister Smriti Zubin Irani (Bhopal) among others.

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, Minister of Minority Affairs Najma A Heptulla, and some of the other leaders are out of the country, while the participation of some leaders like J P Nadda is tentative.

Prime Minister Modi will also attend an International Yoga Day function in Chandigarh, where over one lakh people will be participating. He will be joined by Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev on the occasion.

The prime minister had in his address at the mass yoga demonstration event at Rajpath last year said it is the beginning of a new age to train the human mind to achieve new heights of peace and harmony. Sometimes some distortions creep in about many things due to ignorance.

"This has been a tradition for centuries and over the time a lot of things became associated with it. Mind, body, soul, intellect should all be balanced and in harmony, they should be in their natural state of balance and to achieve this state yoga plays an important role," he had said.