New Delhi: BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur will deliver a lecture online to other parliamentarians at an event organised by the Lok Sabha Secretariat to mark International Yoga Day on June 21, according to an official notification.
A tentative schedule notified by the LS Secretariat has listed Thakur’s lecture on “Yoga: A Way of Life” at 12 pm.
“Members are informed that celebration of International Day of Yoga is being organized by PRIDE, Lok Sabha Secretariat in online mode on 21st June, 2021. The celebration will consist of various practical sessions and lectures on various aspects of significance of Yoga in current situation,” the official bulletin said.
Before her, BJP MP Sumedhanand Saraswati from Rajasthan’s Sikar is scheduled to hold a session on meditation.
Thakur is one of the seven accused in the case of the 2008 Malegaon blast, in which six people were killed and 100 were injured. Earlier this year, after failing to remain present in the court multiple times, she appeared in court and was granted exemption from regular appearance by a special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai.
In May 2019, Thakur had called Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse “a true patriot” in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had then said he will never forgive Thakur for insulting Mahatma Gandhi and then Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah announced that the party would take disciplinary action against her in 10 days.
Congress leader Manickam Tagore has taken to Twitter over Thakur being slotted for the lecture, asking if Modi has had a change of heart, considering that the Yoga Day project is a flagship effort by his government.
Several others have commented on how the decision reflects on the Modi government.
Last year, during the first wave of the pandemic Thakur had said reciting the Hanuman Chalisa five times a day until August 5 will “rid the world of the coronavirus pandemic”.