Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Monday inaugurated the IAS professional course phase-II (2018 batch) at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie through video conference.
Referring to the first-ever online inauguration of IAS professional course, he expressed satisfaction that out of 185 participants, nearly 125 are from engineering and other professional backgrounds and added that this will go a long way in meeting the modern day developmental challenges facing India. The minister particularly mentioned that a three-month central government stint as Assistant Secretaries for IAS officers in the beginning of their career started a couple of years back added tremendously in their capacity building. Dwelling on the concept of 115 Aspirational Districts based on 49 key indicators, Singh said that based on a scientifically designed mechanism, each aspirational district was to focus on improving these key indicators and raise its rating viz-a-viz the best performing district of the state and the best performing district of the country in the given indicators.