New Delhi: The Centre has invited all members of Parliament to join a meditation camp next week that its organisers claim is intended to help improve the working ambience and decision-making capacities in the nation’s apex legislative body.

All Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs have been requested to attend the camp conducted by a Mumbai-based trust that promotes meditation, the Union minister of state for ayurveda, yoga, unani siddha homeopathy and yoga Shripad Naik told reporters today.

The eight-day camp starting here on April 27 will be open to MPs and their family members and will provide lectures and some meditative exercises as the trust founder will seek to “plant the seeds of spirituality” in the MPs, the trust’s volunteers said.

Naik and the trust’s volunteers say they expect the camp to have a positive impact on the functioning of Parliament. “We want anger to be converted into positive energy,” Naik said, asked whether the camp would in any way help maintain decorum in Parliament. “We have requested all MPs to come, at least for two or three days, to gain experience – you cannot know the taste of sugar unless you taste it.”

The camp will seek to help MPs achieve an alignment of “body, mind, and spirit”, a top ministry official said. Naik said his ministry would also seek to promote similar camps in all state legislative Assemblies.

“We expect attitudinal change in our MPs after this,” claimed Anant Khamankar, a company secretary in Mumbai, and volunteer with the trust which has claimed in a press release that while MPs are called upon to take crucial decisions, meditation will help make them more “balanced and positive” and decisions they take in such a state “will always be positive and beneficial for the nation”.

The trust also claims thatits meditative technique will help individuals , including MPs, who practice it experience “Universal Divine Energy”. The two-hour per day sessions will run from 6.30pm through 8.30pm.