On 22 June 2026, the Ministry of Defence announced that the 7th edition of the Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh Memorial Hockey Tournament 2026 will run from 23 June to 03 July 2026 at Air Force Station Jalahalli, Bengaluru. The Air Force Sports Control Board (AFSCB) has organised the tournament every year since 2018; this edition fields 16 teams on a league-cum-knockout basis, with the winners taking ₹10 lakh. The opening ceremony is presided over by Air Marshal S. Sivakumar (Air Officer-in-Charge Administration) and the closing by Air Marshal Seethepalli Shrinivas (AOC-in-C, Training Command).
A sports fixture rarely carries marks on its own. What makes this a high-yield item for the NDA written exam — and a superb SSB lecturette — is the man it is named after. Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh is the only officer in the history of the Indian Air Force to hold the five-star rank. Around that single fact sits an entire cluster of examinable general knowledge: IAF ranks, the meaning of "five-star," India's two Field Marshals, the structure and ethos of the Air Force, and the place of hockey in service life. This explainer pivots from the tournament to all of it.
Who was Marshal Arjan Singh?
Arjan Singh (1919–2017) was one of independent India's most decorated and consequential air warriors. He took charge as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 August 1964, at the age of just 44 — among the youngest to lead the IAF. His defining hour came in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, when he commanded the Air Force as it flew offensive and close-support sorties alongside the Army. He is remembered for leading from the front, personally flying to forward bases and keeping morale high, and the air arm's performance in 1965 is closely associated with his leadership.
His honours mark several "firsts." For his 1965 service he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan. In 1966 he became the first IAF officer to be promoted to the rank of Air Chief Marshal (four-star). And decades later, in January 2002, the Government of India conferred upon him the rank of Marshal of the Air Force — the President, K. R. Narayanan, handing him the Marshal's baton at Rashtrapati Bhavan in a ceremony in April 2002. That promotion made him the first and only five-star officer the Indian Air Force has ever had. He died in 2017 and was given a state funeral with full military honours.
For exam purposes, fix three dates to him: CAS in 1964, the 1965 war, and the 2002 Marshal's rank.
What "five-star" actually means
Military ranks are often described by the number of "stars," a convention borrowed from how senior officers' insignia were once depicted. In the Indian context the operational service heads wear four stars, and a five-star rank is an exceptional, ceremonial, lifetime honour awarded for extraordinary wartime service — it is not a posting anyone is appointed to in the normal chain of command. Holders of five-star rank do not retire in the usual sense; they remain officers of their service for life and are entitled to wear the uniform.
The three Indian five-star equivalents are worth memorising as a set, because the NDA and CDS papers love matching them across services:
- Army: Field Marshal
- Navy: Admiral of the Fleet
- Air Force: Marshal of the Air Force
India has never appointed an Admiral of the Fleet, so the Navy's five-star rank exists on paper but has no holder. That makes the five-star club very small indeed — just three individuals in Indian history, all detailed below.
India's five-star officers — the complete list
This is the single most testable table in the whole topic. There are only three five-star officers in independent India's history:
- Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa (Army) — the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Army after Independence; conferred Field Marshal on 15 January 1986.
- Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw (Army) — Chief of the Army Staff during the 1971 war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh; he was the first Indian to be made Field Marshal, on 1 January 1973.
- Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh (Air Force) — the only five-star officer of the IAF; conferred in 2002.
A clean way to remember the order: Manekshaw was made Field Marshal first (1973) even though Cariappa was senior and the earlier Commander-in-Chief — Cariappa received the honour later, in 1986. And there is no five-star officer in the Indian Navy at all. If a question asks "how many five-star officers has India had?", the answer is three: two Field Marshals and one Marshal of the Air Force.
Indian Air Force ranks — top to bottom
Because Arjan Singh's career runs the full ladder, this is a natural place to lock the IAF commissioned-officer ranks in descending order:
- Marshal of the Air Force (five-star, ceremonial — Arjan Singh only)
- Air Chief Marshal (four-star — the rank of the serving head, the Chief of the Air Staff)
- Air Marshal (three-star)
- Air Vice Marshal (two-star)
- Air Commodore
- Group Captain
- Wing Commander
- Squadron Leader
- Flight Lieutenant
- Flying Officer
A useful cross-service mapping the examiner enjoys: an IAF Group Captain is equivalent to an Army Colonel and a Navy Captain; an IAF Wing Commander maps to an Army Lieutenant Colonel; a Squadron Leader to a Major. The serving head of the IAF is an Air Chief Marshal titled the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) — note the distinction from the ceremonial five-star Marshal of the Air Force. In the PIB release that prompted this article, both ceremony presiders, S. Sivakumar and Seethepalli Shrinivas, hold the three-star rank of Air Marshal, which is exactly the rank that heads major appointments and commands.
The Indian Air Force in brief
The IAF is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces, established on 8 October 1932 (Air Force Day is celebrated on this date). Its motto is "Nabha Sparsham Deeptam" — a phrase from the Bhagavad Gita meaning roughly "Touch the Sky with Glory." The President of India is the Supreme Commander of all three services; the IAF is led operationally by the Chief of the Air Staff.
For organisation, the IAF is divided into commands — a mix of operational and functional formations. The standard list to remember is seven commands:
- Western Air Command (HQ New Delhi)
- Eastern Air Command (HQ Shillong)
- Central Air Command (HQ Prayagraj)
- South Western Air Command (HQ Gandhinagar)
- Southern Air Command (HQ Thiruvananthapuram)
- Training Command (HQ Bengaluru) — the formation whose chief presides over this tournament's closing
- Maintenance Command (HQ Nagpur)
The first five are operational; Training and Maintenance are functional. Connecting the news to this map is exactly the analytical move that earns marks: the closing ceremony is led by the AOC-in-C, Training Command, Bengaluru, and the venue, AFS Jalahalli, lies in the Bengaluru area — the home of the IAF's training ecosystem. Aspirants who can fit a current event onto a structural framework like this consistently outscore those who only memorise the headline; that habit is drilled hard in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
Why hockey — sport and the armed forces
The release stresses that Arjan Singh's "passion for the game of Hockey was unparalleled" and that he inspired air warriors "not only in war but also in the field of sports." That is not incidental. Hockey is woven into India's national sporting identity, and the armed forces have long been among its greatest patrons and producers of talent.
The towering name here is Major Dhyan Chand, the "Wizard of Hockey," whose mastery powered India's hockey gold medals at the 1928 (Amsterdam), 1932 (Los Angeles) and 1936 (Berlin) Olympics — the start of a golden run in which India won hockey gold at six consecutive Olympic Games. Dhyan Chand rose through the Indian Army, underscoring how deeply service life and hockey are intertwined. India's National Sports Day is observed on 29 August, his birth anniversary, and the country's highest sporting honour for lifetime achievement is now the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award (renamed in 2021). Service tournaments like the AFSCB's Arjan Singh Memorial sit in this tradition: the IAF, like the Army and Navy, runs structured sports to build fitness, teamwork and esprit de corps, and it "consistently produces athletes who represent India," as the release notes.
For the SSB stage, this theme is gold. Sport is a frequent lecturette and group-discussion topic, and "the role of sports in nation-building" or "armed forces and sports" can be tackled confidently with Dhyan Chand, the Khel Ratna, National Sports Day, and service tournaments as ready examples. Tracking releases like this through our daily NDA current affairs is how you build that bank of specifics.
Quick revision capsule
- Only five-star officer of the IAF: Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh (rank conferred 2002).
- Five-star equivalents: Army = Field Marshal · Navy = Admiral of the Fleet · Air Force = Marshal of the Air Force.
- India's five-star officers (three total): FM Cariappa (1986), FM Manekshaw (1973), MAF Arjan Singh (2002). No five-star in the Navy.
- Serving IAF head: Air Chief Marshal (four-star), titled Chief of the Air Staff.
- IAF motto: "Nabha Sparsham Deeptam" (Touch the Sky with Glory); raised 8 Oct 1932.
- Hockey: Major Dhyan Chand, Olympic golds 1928/1932/1936; National Sports Day 29 Aug; Khel Ratna named after him (2021).
- The 2026 hook: 7th Arjan Singh Memorial Hockey Tournament, 23 Jun–03 Jul 2026, AFS Jalahalli, Bengaluru, 16 teams, organised by AFSCB (since 2018).
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. Who is the only officer in the history of the Indian Air Force to hold the five-star rank? (a) Subroto Mukerjee (b) Arjan Singh (c) Pratap Chandra Lal (d) Idris Latif → (b) — Arjan Singh was conferred Marshal of the Air Force in 2002, the IAF's sole five-star officer.
Q2. The five-star rank in the Indian Air Force is designated as: (a) Air Chief Marshal (b) Air Marshal (c) Marshal of the Air Force (d) Field Marshal → (c) — "Marshal of the Air Force" is the IAF five-star rank; Air Chief Marshal is four-star.
Q3. How many officers in independent India have ever held a five-star rank? (a) two (b) three (c) four (d) five → (b) — two Field Marshals (Cariappa, Manekshaw) and one Marshal of the Air Force (Arjan Singh).
Q4. During which war did Arjan Singh command the IAF as Chief of the Air Staff? (a) 1962 (b) 1965 (c) 1971 (d) 1999 → (b) — he led the Air Force in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War and earned the Padma Vibhushan.
Q5. Who was the first Indian to be made a Field Marshal? (a) K. M. Cariappa (b) Sam Manekshaw (c) K. S. Thimayya (d) Arjan Singh → (b) — Manekshaw became Field Marshal on 1 January 1973; Cariappa received it later, in 1986.
Q6. The serving head of the Indian Air Force holds which rank? (a) Marshal of the Air Force (b) Air Marshal (c) Air Chief Marshal (d) Air Vice Marshal → (c) — the Chief of the Air Staff is a four-star Air Chief Marshal.
Q7. The motto of the Indian Air Force, "Nabha Sparsham Deeptam," means: (a) Service Before Self (b) Touch the Sky with Glory (c) Glory to the Motherland (d) Death or Glory → (b) — drawn from the Bhagavad Gita; the IAF was raised on 8 October 1932.
Q8. India's National Sports Day, linked to hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand, is observed on: (a) 23 January (b) 29 August (c) 8 October (d) 15 January → (b) — 29 August marks Dhyan Chand's birth anniversary; the Khel Ratna is named after him.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Military ranks and five-star officers are a recurring NDA/CDS GK staple. The most common framings are: "the only five-star officer of the IAF" (Arjan Singh), matching the five-star rank names across the three services (Field Marshal / Admiral of the Fleet / Marshal of the Air Force), and naming India's two Field Marshals with the twist that Manekshaw preceded Cariappa in receiving the honour. Expect ordering questions on IAF ranks (Air Chief Marshal vs Marshal of the Air Force trips many candidates) and the serving head's rank/title (Air Chief Marshal / Chief of the Air Staff). The IAF motto, raising date (1932) and command structure are standard static-GK fillers, while Dhyan Chand, National Sports Day (29 Aug) and the Khel Ratna anchor the sports angle. The fresh 2026 hook — the 7th Arjan Singh Memorial Hockey Tournament at AFS Jalahalli — is the kind of dated event that seeds a "person the tournament is named after" or "organising body (AFSCB)" item, and is a ready-made SSB lecturette on sport and service life. Treat the names and dates as the scoring core; the tournament details are the trigger, not the answer.
Preparing for NDA or CDS? Military ranks, the five-star officers and the Indian Air Force are guaranteed GK and a strong SSB lecturette set — easy marks once the names and dates are locked. Track our daily NDA current affairs and train with serving-officer faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Maj Sunil Chopra — Veteran, Indian Army; co-founder & SSB mentor at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk. The Cavalier, founded by ex-Army officers, has trained NDA/CDS/SSB aspirants since 2001 (Facebook · YouTube).
Source: PIB release, 22 June 2026. Facts cross-verified.