Govt. denies barring Muslims as yoga gurus – The Hindu

The AYUSH Ministry has denied following a discriminatory policy in recruiting Muslims as yoga practitioners even as the Milli Gazette, an influential community web fortnightly, put out a series of documents claiming the exact opposite. At the time of going to press, editor Zafurul Islam Khan said his paper stood by the story filed by freelance journalist Pushp Sharma, and was in the process of putting out more documents in the public domain.

Mr Sharma was unavailable for comments.

The findings of the RTI application, as reported in the Mili Gazette, set off a storm on social media with the claim that under the official government policy, despite 3,841 Muslim candidates having applied for the post of yoga instructor, none was invited, selected or sent abroad.

While Minister with independent charge Sripad Naik dismissed the RTI query as bogus and promised an inquiry, Anil Ganeriwala, joint secretary, said the ministry simply cannot have a recruitment policy based on religion.

“We have an open recruitment and selection processs like all government jobs.”