The AYUSH Ministry spent over Rs 34 crore for International Yoga Day celebrations in the last two years, a query filed under Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed. International Yoga Day is celebrated on June 21 every year.
Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) Banamali Naik, however said that the expenditure on celebrations this year has not been finalised as yet. The CPIO also said that this is the expenditure incurred by AYUSH ministry and the total expenditure on Yoga Day was not available. RTI activist Nutan Thakur claimed that a reply to her query filed with AYUSH minister confirmed that the department spent Rs 34.50 crore for celebrating International Yoga Day in 2015 and 2016 respectively. This included Rs 16.40 crore for 2015 and Rs 18.10 crore for 2016. She claimed that the RTI reply added that the total expenditure incurred by other departments on Yoga Day was not available. The department also did not provide information about expenditure made this year on the World Yoga Day. “The CPIO declined to provide a copy of the documents with regard to expenses, stating that they were bulky and ran into hundreds of pages,” she claimed.
Meanwhile, reacting to the AYUSH ministry disclosure, UP Congress media committee Chairman Satyadeo Tripathi said that the department had distorted information claiming that just Rs 34 crore was spent in two years, but the truth is that several thousand crore rupees were been spent every year on advertisement of Yoga Day celebrations. Tripathi demanded that the Central government should come out with a ‘White Paper’ over how much has been spent by all government departments and state governments in the celebrations of International Yoga Day. Tripathi also claimed that both the Union and State governments have no money to waive off farm loans but spend thpousands of crores of rupees to publicise Prime Minister Narendra Modi doing Yoga. “Is it not mionumental misuse and wastage of public funds IJ The benefit of Yoga is known to every Indian. So organising such programmes and that too in a massive scale every year is nothing but a waste of public money,” Tripathi commented.