On Ekta Diwas (Unity Day), 29 October 2026, Bihar's Chief Minister flagged off the Patliputra–Ekta Nagar Special Train from Patna, carrying 1,100 participants drawn from 22 Naxal-free districts of Bihar to Ekta Nagar (Kevadia), Gujarat — home to the world's tallest statue. The Chief Minister's Office of Bihar announced the flag-off, framing the journey as a symbol of both security gains and national unity.

A train journey that maps Bihar's security transformation

The choice of participants is deliberate and pointed. By drawing all 1,100 travellers exclusively from Naxal-free districts, the state government is turning a tourism trip into a public testimony — these are communities that once lived under the shadow of Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) and are now boarding a government-organised train to celebrate national integration. The message is as much about what Bihar has overcome as it is about where the train is headed.

State administrations across eastern India have periodically arranged such visits to the Statue of Unity around Ekta Diwas, using cultural tourism as a soft-power complement to security operations. Bihar's version this year amplifies that template by explicitly tying the beneficiary pool to the LWE rollback story.

Ekta Nagar and the Statue of Unity as a political landmark

Ekta Nagar, formerly known as Kevadia, was renamed and developed around the Statue of Unity — the 182-metre bronze likeness of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel inaugurated in October 2018 on the banks of the Narmada river in Gujarat. At roughly twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, it is the world's tallest statue and was conceived as a monument to national integration, mirroring Patel's role in unifying India's princely states after Independence.

Arriving on or around 31 October — Patel's birth anniversary and the official date of Ekta Diwas — the Bihar contingent will join what is typically a large, state-organised national programme at the site. The pairing of a Naxal-free Bihar with Patel's unity symbol is a narrative the current state administration has evidently chosen with care.

What 22 Naxal-free districts signal about Bihar's LWE landscape

Left-Wing Extremism once stretched across a significant swath of Bihar's southern and central belt, part of the broader 'Red Corridor' running through Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. Sustained joint operations by central and state forces, combined with development outreach, have progressively shrunk Naxal influence. The state's claim of 22 Naxal-free districts — if sustained — would represent one of the more substantial security turnarounds in the region in recent years.

Putting residents of those districts on a train to Ekta Nagar is a deliberate closing of a loop: the promise of peaceful, open participation in national life, made real with a train ticket and a flag-off ceremony.

For 1,100 people from Bihar's once-troubled heartland, the journey to the Iron Man's statue is also a quiet announcement — that the geography of fear is shrinking, and the geography of possibility is growing.