PM Narendra Modi leads Yoga day celebration with thousands of people at Rajpath

Indian PM Narendra Modi leads the first International Yoga Day celebration along with at least 40,000 people at Rajpath for performing yoga in a record breaking event.

Students, government employees, citizens participated in the event, took their positions on the mats that were laid out to perform yoga for almost 35 minutes. This included various asanas as well as meditation.

PM Modi also joined the people at Rajpath in performing yoga after delivering its speech to mark the start of the event.

Starting the event, Narendra Modi said that the program is aimed at benefiting the people by making them physically and mentally healthy.

For most of the people, yoga is just a physical exercise. This is their biggest mistake. Had this been the case, children working in circuses could have been called yogis. Thus yoga is not only to make the body flexible," he said while addressing the people at Rajpath.

We are not only celebrating a day but we are training the human mind to begin the new era of peace. This is a program for the benefit of the mankind, tension free world and a program that will help to spread the message of Sadbhavana," Modi said.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung and many other ministers of BJP also joined the yoga event.

External Affairs Minister Shushma Sawraj was in New York to participate in the Yoga Day celebration at the United Nations.