States gear up to mark Day of Yoga
NEW DELHI: Thousands of people across the country are gearing up to celebrate the fourth edition of the International Yoga Day on Thursday with mass sessions of exercise and meditation.
Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the celebrations at Ramabai Ambedkar Sabha Sthal in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow as thousands of people across the country struck various poses and talked about the benefits of the ancient physical and spiritual discipline during events to celebrate the day.
The United Nations declared June 21 as the International Day of Yoga in 2014 after Modi called for the day to be adopted as a global celebration of yoga, an ancient practice that began in India more than 5,000 years ago.
Here’s how the states are planning to mark the day:
UTTARAKHAND
Modi will lead the main event at the sprawling campus of the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun, in which over 50,000 citizens are expected to participate.
Uttarakhand’s minister of higher education Dhan Singh Rawat claimed the government has received registrations “more than expected”. School and college students will also participate. The gate of FRI will be opened from 12am to 5am for the programme that would begin at 6.30am. The PM is scheduled to spend over an hour at the venue.
TELANGANA
The main event in Telangana is being organised by the state government in coordination with the Union ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH). The GMC Balayogi Stadium at Gachibowli is the main venue in Hyderabad, where around 4,000 people are expected to participate from 6.30am to 8pm. State AYUSH commissioner Dr Rajendra Reddy said similar events would be organised in all the districts of Telangana.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit will also organise celebrations at the Amberpet Municipal Grounds in Hyderabad.
Bharatiya Prani Mitra Sangh, along with Jeevraksha Trust and other animal welfare organisations, will hold yoga sessions from 8am to 9am for around 2,000 school students and other enthusiasts at Exhibition Grounds.
RAJASTHAN
Kota, popular as the coaching hub of the country, is eyeing to make a Guinness world record for organising yoga event with maximum participants on International Yoga Day on June 21.
Around 200,000 people are expected to attend the main event at RAC ground, which will be led by Ramdev. There will be smaller events in other districts. The South Western Command of the army is also hosting an event at Cavalry Ground in Jaipur.
GUJARAT
At least 12.5 million people in over 43,000 centres across the state are expected to participate.
In Ahmedabad’s Sardar Patel Stadium, nearly 1,000 differently abled children will perform “silent yoga”. They will be instructed through Bluetooth-enabled headphones at the event to be attended by state ministers and governor OP Kohli.
The participants will include 4,082 pregnant women and 8,732 differently abled children.
BIHAR
Around one lakh people are expected to participate in Bihar. Governor Satya Pal Malik and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi will also attend the event, which is being organised in collaboration with the state government at Patliputra Sports Complex, Kankarbagh, in Patna.
This will be the first time that the state government would organise the function. Earlier, when the JD(U) was part of the Grand Alliance, no functions were organised by the state government.
Swami Vaishampayan, a Yoga expert, has been invited to conduct the session.
HARYANA
State’s minister of sports Anil Vij has said nearly 120,000 people are expected to participate in events across Haryana. The main venues are Panchkula and Jhajjar where governor Kaptan Singh Solanki and chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar are the chief guests, respectively
In Chandigarh, nearly 5,000 people are expected to gather at Sector 17’s Plaza to attend the event by the AYUSH ministry. Union minister Smriti Irani will be the guest of honour and UT administrator VP Singh Badnore will be the chief guest.
“The budget for the event is ~40 lakh, which will be spent on yoga mats, T-shirts, eight LED screens, drinking water, 16 loudspeakers, stage decorations, 10 single-seater VIP sofas and carpeting at the Plaza,” an officer said. “Last year, we spent ~30 lakh on the event,” the officer added.
WEST BENGAL
The main event in the state will be held at Esplanade, at the heart of Kolkata, where a gathering of more than 3,000 people is expected. Union minister of state for tourism and culture Mahesh Sharma and state BJP president Dilip Ghosh are slated to attend it.
The event is being organised by Krida Bharti, the sports wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which will hold events in 10 other districts.
ASSAM
Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal will lead the programme, expected to be attended by more than 6,000 people, at the Nurul Amin Stadium in Nagaon district at 6am. Union minister of state for railways Rajen Gohain, state ministers Himanta Biswa Sarma and Pijush Hazarika are expected to take part. Union minister of state for parliamentary affairs Vijay Goel would take part in another event in Guwahati.
ARUNACHAL PRADESH
Chief minister Pema Khandu will join an event at the police headquarters in Itanagar. “#Yoga is the way to experience the reality
just the way it is. Come join me in celebrating,” he tweeted. State officials said as many as 1,000 people are likely to take part.
CHHATTISGARH
The Chhattisgarh government is aiming for a Guinness record by ensuring the participation of 10 million people across the state between 7am to 8am. Chief minister Raman Singh will attend an event in Raipur. The departments of social welfare and school education are organising the event. Chhattisgarh is the only state which has a yoga commission, formed in 2017.
JHARKHAND
The main event will be held at 6:15am in Prabhat Tara Maidan in state capital Ranchi where chief minister Raghubar Das, local members of Parliament, ministers and government officers will perform yoga for “harmony and peace”. It will be telecast live till the end at 7:45am.
KERALA
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the state-level yoga day celebrations at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Kochi on Thursday. At least 1,000 trained instructors will participate in the hour-long demonstration. Yoga trainers from 22 countries will also hold a session in Fort Kochi.
How is an Indian passport revoked, on what grounds?
Grounds are laid out in the Indian Passport Act of 1967 for revoking and impounding of a passport by the passport issuing authority in the ministry of external affairs (MEA). These include: suppressing material information or providing wrong information; obtaining another passport; safeguarding the interests of the “sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of India, friendly relations of India with any foreign country, or in the interests of the general public”; sentencing of the passport holder to imprisonment for not less than two years; pending proceedings before a criminal court.
The document can also be revoked if a warrant or summons, or an arrest warrant, has been issued; or if an order prohibiting the passport holder’s departure from India has been issued by any court, and the passport authority is satisfied with the warrant or summons so issued.
When a passport is revoked, what is the process followed, both internally and externally, to enforce the cancellation of the passport?
Once a passport is revoked, the MEA makes the entry in an internal database to show it as revoked. The same information is given out to immigration authorities so that the holder of a passport cannot use the revoked document to travel out of the country. The person is told to return the passport at the nearest office to cancel it physically. Externally, the MEA informs an investigative agency on the revocation of the passport; the agency in turn informs Interpol, which issues an alert notice and includes the person’s name in its database.
In Nirav‘s case, the MEA told the Central Bureau of Investigation about the revocation of his passport. The CBI said on February 15 it got a “diffusion” — a request for cooperation or alert mechanism — issued by Interpol against Nirav. A diffusion is less formal than a notice, but is also used to request the arrest or location of an individual or additional information in relation to a police investigation. It is circulated directly by the nodal investigative agency of the country (the CBI, in India’s case) with Interpol to the member countries of their choice, or to the entire Interpol membership, and is simultaneously recorded in Interpol’s information system.
What is the interface with Interpol?
The CBI is the nodal agency for interactions with Interpol and it deals with any request that comes from other member countries seeking assistance in a probe. Any request seeking the help of Interpol on any investigation-related matter from any state police is also routed through the CBI.
Once a passport is revoked, can an Indian national travel internationally?
Ideally, no. Information about the revocation of an Indian passport gets fed into a system that is expected to be shared the world over, making the travel of the Indian passport holder legally impossible. Interpol is the world’s largest international police organisation, with 192 countries as its members.
What happened in the case of Nirav Modi? When was the passport revoked?
On the advice of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the passport issuing authority in the MEA, suspended the validity of the passports of Nirav Deepak
How could Nirav travel on a revoked passport?
A diffusion notice, unlike a Red Corner notice, doesn’t mandate the arrest of a person. So the countries Nirav travelled to might have ignored the diffusion notice. How he managed to travel remains unclear owing to different explanations. For example, the ED said he used six passports, the CBI said he travelled on revoked passports, and the MEA said his five previous passports were physically cancelled and the only travel document he had as per its records was revoked on February 23. There are suspicions that the passports may not have been stamped as cancelled.
What happens when an Indian passport is swiped in an international airport outside?
It records entry/exit. The immigration offices have different databases such as the passport details of wanted persons shared by Interpol, similar requests made by other countries. So the entry is checked against this data as well.
How is the database maintained and checked?
Once a passport is revoked, the details are submitted to Interpol’s database. The database is accessible to all member-countries. It is up to the member-countries to act upon it. The CBI not only updated Interpol database after the revocation of Nirav Modi’s passport; it took up the issue with six countries – the US, the UK, France, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Belgium -- where it was suspected that Nirav Modi may go. But among the six countries only the UK submitted details about his entries and exits at Heathrow on June 5. The details are up to March 31. There is no further communication from these countries, CBI officials say. Besides, India had also sent a separate request through MEA to Hong Kong to arrest Nirav Modi.