NEW DELHI: International Yoga Day will be celebrated on a much larger scale this year, with the government putting in place a “better protocol of asanas” for the July 21 event. The Ministry of Human Resource Development has been asked to organise a Yoga Olympiad to popularise the practice among students, Ayush Minister Shripad Yesso Naik has said.
“We are requesting various yoga institutions to provide necessary technical support and guidance to the state for the event,” Naik said.
NGOs will be given funds in each district of the country to organise a one-month training programme. The funds will be provided by the Centre for Support for Yoga and Naturopathy.
A senior official said that the government has requested important yoga institutions to provide technical guidelines to a group of states so that there will be collaboration between the state governments and yoga institutions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had led the nation in performing yoga on Rajpath on the International Yoga Day last year.
The Minister also asked States to equip their regulatory framework and infrastructure to meet the quality requirements prescribed by law as there were concerns being expressed over the standard of medicines.
“We are very much concerned about the weak control and sale of sub-standard and spurious Ayush medicines. In every Parliament session, we get a lot of questions on sub-standard drugs and quality,” Naik said.
He said that compaints were specifically about misleading advertisements and tall claims made by Ayush medicines. These have been brought to “our notice by Ministries of Consumer Affairs and Information and Broadcasting and Drug Controller General,” he said.
“Quality control of Ayush drugs is statutory requirement in accordance to the quality requirement in provisions of Drug and Cognitive Act,” he said.