Government to award media houses to encourage participation in yoga campaign: Javadekar

Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said Saturday the government has decided to honour media houses for their contribution towards promoting healthy living through yoga.

He said 33 awards will be given — 11 each for newspaper organisations, TV and radio channels. A six-member jury will consider the entries in all 23 official languages.

Media campaigns on yoga from June 10 to June 25 will be considered for International Yoga Day Awards.

"One of India's gifts to the world is yoga. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed to celebrate June 21 as International Day of Yoga (IDY), the United Nations and all countries responded positively," he said.

"Every year, more than 200 countries celebrate IDY. This year also, I am sure, millions of people will participate in it.

"We have observed that many media houses are also doing their bit to propagate the message of healthy life and healthy living through yoga... They are carrying out their own campaigns. We have decided to recognise the services and (yoga) campaigns of the media," the minister said.

This year, the government has shortlisted Delhi, Shimla, Mysore, Ahmedabad and Ranchi to hold national programmes to mark the International Yoga Day.

Last year, the main IDY event was held at the ground of Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated.

The first IDY event was organised at Rajpath in New Delhi in 2015, in which representatives of 191 countries took part.

In 2016, the main function was held in Chandigarh and in 2017, it was held in Lucknow.