Nepal’s caretaker Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has sparked yet another controversy by claiming that yoga originated not in India but his country, reports TOI.

“Much before the existence of India as a nation, yoga was and has been practiced in Nepal. Yoga did not originate in India. When yoga was discovered, India was not constituted. There was no country like India because there were several fringe states when yoga came into practice in Nepal,” he said in his address on International Yoga Day.

“So, yoga originated in Nepal or around Uttarakhand...We never gave credit to our sages who discovered yoga...we always talked about this or that professors and their contributions. We could not put our claim rightly. We could not take it across the globe. Indian Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi made it famous by proposing to celebrate International Yoga Day on the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Then it got international recognition,” Oli added.

Earlier, Oli had attempted to push that Lord Ram was not born in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya, but in Nepal. After declaring the controversial birth-place of Lord Ram, Oli had held a meeting with a delegation of Madi Municipality led by Mayor Dhakal on 9 August last year and instructed to begin excavation in that area to gather more evidence.

Oli also vowed to extend all possible support from his government to the Madi Municipality to carry out the excavation works as well as formulating a Master Plan and start installing idols of Ram, Sita, and Laxman immediately.