International Yoga Day Celebrations in Chandigarh Costed 6.5 Crore

Chandigarh witnessed Second International Yoga Day on June 21, 2016. This event was a 45-minutes yoga show in which the Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed yoga with over 30000 enthusiasts who gathered at Capitol Complex in Sector 1, Chandigarh. This whole event costed a whooping amount of 6.5 crores. Now, that’s a huge amount for a 45 minutes event, isn’t it. Here a breakdown of how the event cost elevated to 6.5 Crores.

A sum of Rs. 1.5 crores was spent on the promotion for the event. Promotions were done in and around Chandigarh via various means mainly print and electronic media.

The main event at the Capitol Complex costed to around 3.5 crores. The centre released a sum of Rs 5 crores for this purpose, but the remaining 1.5 crores had to be taken care by the UT administration. This was done via various means, majorly the sum of Rs 1 crore out of the chunk was revived from various organizations/companies under Corporate Social Responsibility Fund.

Out of the total amount of Rs. 6.5 Crores, officials claim to have cleared the major payments and few payments related to advertisements are being taken care of as of now.

A Delhi-based private firm provided the major logistic support for International Yoga Day at Chandigarh. The organization made a bid of Rs 2.89 Crores for this mega event at Capitol Complex and this sum included everything from setting up a mega stage with a span of 3600 sq. ft. Apart from the grand stage, Capitol complex at Chandigarh was equipped with:

30,000 yoga mats
New soft carpet spanning across 10 lakh sq ft
40 digital LED projection screens with a screen size of 8 inches x 12 inches
A 1000 sq ft separate stage for media and performers
Security screen cloth of 20-25 ft height spanning across 50000 sq ft
300 pre-fabricated toilets.
2000 KVA capacity gensets.
1.25 lakhs drinking water bottles of half litre capacity.
200 CCTV cameras.
50 fire extinguishers (ready on the spot)
30 monitoring screens of 24 inches each
Seating arrangement for 500 VVIP guests.
300 dustbins at the venue.

Maybe there were some other things apart from this logistics list that were there at the International Yoga Day venue in Chandigarh. The private agency also had its hand in designing and setting up the gigantic venue and took the responsibility of the venue and the event too.

With this we can surely say good things are not easily achievable at decent costs but the event made its worth over and above these petty issues.

Maybe, it was due to this mega event at Capitol Complex that the thought for heritage tag for the capitol complex sped up and Chandigarh actually got the status of the world heritage site.

Source: The Tribune