Top 10: Things you didn't know about Ramdev

New Delhi: The government suffered a fresh blow in containing growing anger over corruption from million of voters as Ramdev, the country's most famous yoga guru, gained the support of a leading civil activist for his "fast-until-death" against graft.

Here are some facts about Ramdev

1.He works 18-20 hours a day, waking up at 3 am every morning to begin his exercises, fuelled by a diet of milk, green vegetables and seasonal fruit.

2. The yoga guru claims to have a follower in every household in India, and at least 30 million people tune in every day to his yoga programme that describes methods and teachings for treating anything from diabetes to high blood pressure.

3. Ramdev's main yoga centre in Haridwar, in Uttarakhand, can hold 6,000 people, and is the heartbeat of a global business spread across three trusts with a turnover of $ 40 million every year.

4.His assets include a Scottish island now renamed "Peace Island", a two-campus university dedicated to yoga teaching and a pharmaceutical company producing ayurvedic medicine and herbal products.

5. Ramdev has promised to form a national political party to challenge the ruling Congress party at the 2014 general elections, and contest all 543 seats across India.

6. Ramdev has claimed that homosexuality is a mental disease, and that mentally stable people do not become homosexuals.

7.When the Delhi High Court decriminalised homosexuality in 2009, local media reported Ramdev said: "The verdict will encourage criminality and sick mentality. This kind of thing is shameful and insulting."

8. Ramdev was also sent a cease and desist order by the health ministry after he said that sex education in schools should be replaced by yoga education to combat the spread of HIV and AIDS.

9. Ramdev's trust runs courses and workshops in Britain, the United States, Canada, Mauritius and Nepal, and a book and CD business with a monthly turnover of around $ 500,000. He is scheduled to travel to Russia in late July for a series of workshops and lectures.

10. He says he has never eaten an egg, nor drank alcohol.