Thu, Jun 11, 2026
Coming Up, IAS Mentorship Event At Statue Of Unity
This will be the first such gathering of officers from across cadres, following a recent suggestion by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to organise structured interactions between senior and young IAS officers for knowledge-sharing and mentorship
Jun 10, 2026 · 2 min read
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, known as the Iron Man of India and the country's first Home Minister, has just been honoured with a new epithet: patron saint of the civil services. And in keeping with that, back-to-back events for Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers will now be held under the Statue of Unity, which was built as a memorial to him.
The Centre also plans to hold a mega mentorship event for in-service junior IAS officers at the Statue of Unity, located in Kevadia in Gujarat's Narmada district.
This will be the first such gathering of officers from across cadres, following a recent suggestion by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to organise structured interactions between senior and young IAS officers for knowledge-sharing and mentorship.
Recently, the Lal Bahadur Shashtri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) organised a visit of 2020-batch trainee IAS officers to the Statue of Unity. In a post on X on Tuesday, the Academy said, “IAS officers of the 2020 batch visited the Statue of Unity, dedicated to the ‘patron saint of civil services’ Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, in Kevadia, Gujarat, and pledged to dedicate themselves to the making of New India.”
Keeping this in mind, the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), in a written communication to Chief Secretaries of all the states and Union Territories, had directed them to nominate officers for the first such interaction at the venue on October 31, 2026, the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
In 2014, the Central government announced to observe October 31 as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas (National Unity Day) to commemorate Patel’s birth anniversary, to honour his pivotal role in integrating over 560 princely states into the modern and united Indian union after Independence.
The DoPT had also suggested that the senior or veteran, as well as young IAS officers, may be picked from diverse batches and with expertise across varied domains of governance, public administration, policy formulation, and other relevant areas.
The state governments were also asked to make all necessary arrangements for the visit, the DoPT said, highlighting that the Prime Minister's vision “seeks to encourage meaningful engagement between senior and younger civil servants through structured mentorship and knowledge-sharing interactions... and the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel carries immense symbolic significance and reinforces the ideals of national unity”.
Officials in the DoPT said that the exercise “will be conducted every year on October 31”, besides regular visits by trainee officers as part of their training module.
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