Ballari district administration has made preparations for holding Kalyana Karnataka Utsav Day and a Yogathon on September 17 to mark the liberation of Kalyana Karnataka from the princely state of Hyderabad in 1948.
Deputy Commissioner of Ballari Pavan Kumar Malapati held a preparatory meeting at his office on Monday and assigned tasks to subordinate officers.
“We have planned a Yogathon on September 17. As over 20,000 students, regular Yoga practitioners and enthusiasts are expected to participate in the event, this year’s Kalyana Karnataka Utsav Day will be very grand. This has increased our responsibility. We need to plan minutely and execute perfectly to ensure that nothing goes wrong,” Mr. Malapti said.
Specifically laying emphasis on the scheduled Yogathon event, Mr. Malapati directed the officers concerned to ensure that all participants get registered without fail and asked them to involve college principals, teachers and heads of civil society organisations for the purpose.
“The officials and teachers in the Education Department have a greater role to play. The mass performance of Yoga is going to create a world record and no lethargy on the part of government servants in this respect will be tolerated. There are hundreds of Yoga training institutions and civil society organisations promoting Yoga. We need to actively involve them,” Mr. Malapati said.
As per information shared by officials who attended the meeting, 20 boxes will be created at the Ballari Airstrip, one each for a thousand practitioners led by two trainers from the dais. The nearly 20,000 people are expected to collectively form pre-determined Yoga postures for 45 minutes.
“There is a lot of preparatory work to be completed. We have to plan everything well in advance, right from the cleaning of the airstrip and making arrangements for transport and food facilities for the practitioners to putting proper security in place and managing the crowd dispersal after the event,” Mr. Malapati said.
Additional Deputy Commissioner P.S. Manjunath, Assistant Commissioner Akash Shankar, Additional Superintendent of Police Nataraj and other senior officers were present.
