Run for Unity 2026: Amit Shah Flags Off Delhi Run Sets Drug-Free India by 2029 Target as Saini Leads Panchkula Run

On the morning of 31 October 2026, India marked the 151st birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with Runs for Unity across the country, led in the national capital by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and in Haryana by Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini. In New Delhi, Shah flagged off the Run for Unity at the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium. Before the flag-off, President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President C P Radhakrishnan, Shah and Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri paid floral tributes to Patel, whose birth anniversary is observed every year as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, or National Unity Day. Addressing the gathering, Shah recalled Patel as the architect of a united India who forged the country together in just 1,218 days after Independence, bringing more than 560 princely states into the Indian Union. He said Patel’s message was that India’s linguistic, cultural and traditional diversity is a strength, not a weakness, and he pointed to the abrogation of Article 370 as completing the permanent integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India. Shah then set out a clear national goal before flagging off the run. He appealed to citizens across the country to work towards making India completely free from drugs by 31 December 2029, saying that the vision of a developed India, Viksit Bharat, begins with a drug-free India, Nasha-mukt Bharat. The appeal gives the year’s Unity Day run a concrete mission beyond the morning’s ceremony, linking Patel’s legacy of national unity to the fight against drug abuse. In Haryana, Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini flagged off the state’s Run for Unity in Panchkula at 6.30 am from the Shivalik Country Club in the Mata Mansa Devi Complex. Similar runs were held at district headquarters across Haryana between 6.30 am and 8 am under the Haryana Uday initiative, with public representatives and senior officers flagging them off. Saini also paid tribute to Patel in a message calling him a great son of Mother India and a symbol of national unity and integrity, crediting his indomitable willpower and steadfast leadership with threading the princely states into one undivided India. Patel, India’s first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, was born on 31 October 1875, and his birth anniversary has been observed as National Unity Day since 2014. In Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading the day’s main celebrations at Ekta Nagar, home to the 182-metre Statue of Unity, with floral tributes, 31 tourism and infrastructure projects worth Rs 426.71 crore, and a grand Unity Parade in the evening. The day’s message from Delhi to Panchkula was the same: unity is not a slogan for one morning but a continuing national task, from keeping the country together to keeping its youth free from drugs.