Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: On Saturday morning, for the first time in the Republic’s history, Vande Mataram will be sung from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The song turns 150 this year. But read past the ceremony in the Defence Ministry’s own briefing and the more interesting document is the invitation list — 5,000 names, and the categories they were drawn from.
The Defence Secretary, Rajesh Kumar Singh, set out the arrangements at a press conference in New Delhi on 10 August. The headline detail is the song: the National Song will be performed as the Prime Minister arrives, before he hoists the flag and delivers the address. A Mi-17 of the Indian Air Force will fly a 150-year commemorative banner and shower petals over the crowd. On Gyanpath, facing the rampart, 2,500 NCC cadets and MY Bharat volunteers will form the words वंदे मातरम्. Since 8 August, service and central-armed-police bands have been playing at 343 locations across the country, free and open to the public, and they will keep playing until Saturday.
The 80th, and a song at 150: the Ministry of Defence set out the Independence Day arrangements in New Delhi on 10 August 2026. Vande Mataram will be sung from the Red Fort ramparts for the first time.
A guest list is a statement about who a country thinks is worth putting on the rampart. This one has street vendors on it.
At a Glance
• Occasion: 80th Independence Day, 15 August 2026, Red Fort
• First ever: Vande Mataram sung from the ramparts, marking 150 years of the National Song
• Special guests: approximately 5,000
• On the rampart: 19 medallists of the 2026 International Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematical Olympiads
• Forming the words: 2,500 NCC cadets and MY Bharat volunteers on Gyanpath
• Band performances: 343 locations nationwide since 8 August, public entry free
• Enclosures named after: India’s major lakes (Republic Day 2026 used rivers)
• Metro: services from 4 AM on 15 August; free for invitees on a QR e-invitation
• Announced by: Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh, New Delhi, 10 August 2026
The categories on the invitation list are where the ceremony stops being ceremonial. Street vendors registered under PM SVANidhi have been invited. So have urban sanitation workers under the Swachh Bharat Mission, nursing orderlies and ward attendants from Delhi’s government hospitals, Delhi Metro workers, the labour that built and maintains Kartavya Path, and drivers of Bharat Taxi. Alongside them: women entrepreneurs financed under PM Mudra, artisans registered under PM Vishwakarma, fish farmers under PM Matsya Kisan Samridhi Sah-Yojana, PM Surya Ghar rooftop-solar households, PMAY(U) beneficiaries, the best-performing interns from the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme, and start-ups backed by the Startup India Seed Fund. Nineteen school students who won medals at this year’s international science and mathematics Olympiads will sit on the rampart itself. Around 600 winners of the run-up quizzes and painting competitions — one of them on the role of artificial intelligence in building a developed India by 2047 — will also be there.
Two smaller decisions are worth noticing because they are the sort of thing that quietly changes an institution. The seating enclosures, named after rivers for Republic Day this year, have been named after India’s major lakes for Saturday — the same conscious move away from VIP nomenclature, now attached to water conservation. And the post-event work has been planned as carefully as the event: NCC cadets and MY Bharat volunteers will run a plogging and clearance drive the same afternoon so the Red Fort is open again to ordinary visitors without a day lost. The constructive test for next year is whether the guest categories carry through to the follow-up — whether the vendor, the ward attendant and the Olympiad medallist are heard from again in September, and not only photographed in August. Invite them once and it is a gesture. Invite them and then build the policy conversation around them, and it becomes a practice.
