PNS | DEHRADUN
The International Yoga Festival will take place in Rishikesh from March 1 to March 7, with an expected daily attendance of at least 10,000 people. Over 20,000 Yoga practitioners are also expected to participate in this seven-day festival.
The event is being organised by the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN) under the direction of chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami to establish Uttarakhand as a global centre for Yoga. The festival will be held at Ganga Resort, Rishikesh, and will be inaugurated by Dhami on March 1, the GMVN general manager (Tourism) Dayanand Saraswati said. He informed that around 800 GMVN properties have been booked for each day of the event.
The festival will host yoga practitioners, instructors and participants from various countries, who will engage in yoga sessions and meditation practices. Each day, multiple sessions will be conducted, offering yoga training and spiritual discourses. He said that spiritual leaders such as Swami Avdheshanand Giri Maharaj, Acharya Balkrishna, Swami Atmaswaroop, Jaya Kishori and Akshat Gupta will participate in the festival.
The event will also feature cultural performances, including folk music and dance from Uttarakhand, along with performances by music bands and artists from across the country. Indian Ocean, Prem Joshua, Jyoti Nooran and Narendra Singh Negi are among the artists scheduled to perform during the evening cultural programmes, the GM said.
The International Yoga Festival has been organised in Rishikesh for three decades. Last year, the festival was conducted by the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board (UTDB) and saw participation from 42 countries, with 890 foreign visitors attending. Saraswati said that this number is expected to increase this year.
He also informed that this year, the festival will follow a green theme, with special cleanliness drives planned at the venue and along the banks of the Ganga River before and after the event. GMVN has made the necessary preparations and is coordinating with the departments concerned to ensure the festival’s smooth execution, he added.
