Over 54k turn up in Ahmedabad, set record

The International Yoga Day event held at Ahmedabad's GMDC ground on Wednesday entered the Guinness World Records Book with over 54,000 persons, led by Yoga guru Ramdev, participating in it to perform various asanas.

The number, however, is drastically lower than Ramdev's earlier claim of three lakh participants in the event.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani received certificate of the record from the Guinness Book officials at Gandhinagar in the afternoon.

The previous record was set in Delhi on June 21, 2015, when 35,985 people performed yoga at Rajpath with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As per the government release here, 54,522 people took part in the Yoga Day event at GMDC ground on Wednesday, beating the earlier record by a margin of

over 18,000.

Besides, 22 other records, such as the maximum number of Surya Namaskars by one person, were also set during today's event and certified by the Guinness Book officials.

Ramdev had claimed earlier in the morning that around three lakh people did yoga with him.

"Today is the most important day for me, as more than three lakh people performed yoga at one place to set a new world record. We have broken the previous world record, which was set in the presence of our PM, by a huge margin," Ramdev had told reporters after the event.

BJP president Amit Shah, Chief Minister Rupani, Deputy CM Nitin Patel, former Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, several political leaders besides IAS, IPS officers and the high court judges took part in the event.

Amid early morning drizzle, Ramdev made the participants stretch their limbs to perform various yogic postures.

Leaders of various faiths were specially invited to the event, organised jointly by the BJP government in the state and Ramdev's Patanjali Yogpeeth.

While giving instructions to participants during the event, Ramdev invited Shah and Rupani to join him on the dais and follow him in striking yogic postures.

In his address after the event, Shah thanked Prime Minister Modi for making yoga popular globally.

"Though India was trying hard to make yoga popular across the globe since 2011, we got success after the United Nations accepted Modiji's proposal in 2014 and declared June 21 as the World Yoga Day. Since then the popularity of yoga is increasing across the world rapidly," Shah said.

The yoga day was also celebrated at all the district headquarters in the state. In Rajkot, 792 women took part in `aqua yoga,' where they performed asanas in various swimming pools.