The story has been reported and written by Vasudev Jagarlamudi. He works at the intersection of marketing and technology, with a deep love for writing — from ad copy to occasional storytelling. Intrigued by how movements are built, he enjoys bringing communities together around ideas that inspire change. At The Better India, he writes on education, social change, and agriculture.
Eight years ago, The Better India wrote about a Telangana police officer who was guiding UPSC aspirants through WhatsApp — for free.
Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat has not stopped.
Today, his mentorship network reaches thousands of civil services aspirants across the country. In UPSC Civil Services 2025, 331 of the 958 selected candidates had been mentored by his team — more than one in three successful candidates.
The numbers are even more striking in the Indian Forest Service. In 2025, 84 of the 148 selected candidates — more than half — credited Bhagwat’s mentorship. For three consecutive years, from 2023 to 2025, the All India Rank 1 in the Indian Forest Service came from his groups.
And in the UPSC Central Armed Police Forces examination in 2024, 66 of 459 selected candidates were mentored through the programme, with All India Ranks 2, 5, 13, 20 and 35 among them.
Bhagwat himself has since risen to the highest rank in the Telangana police, becoming Director General of Police in April 2026.
Yet the early-morning alarm has not changed.
Neither has the WhatsApp group.
The village boy who once doubted himself
To understand why Bhagwat spends hours mentoring civil services aspirants, often before and after a demanding police job, it helps to go back to Pathardi in Ahmednagar (now Ahilyanagar) district of Maharashtra.
He grew up there until Class 10 before moving to Pune for college.
For a young student from a rural background, the language of the UPSC examination seemed intimidating.
“I had an inferiority complex about English. My background was rural,” he recalls.
Mahesh Bhagwat
Then he saw something that changed his perception of what was possible.
A college senior wrote the UPSC examination in Marathi and cleared it. Bhagwat also read about Bhushan Gagrani, the former Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, who secured All India Rank 3 while taking Marathi literature and history as his optionals and writing the examination entirely in his mother tongue.
“That is when I realised, we can do something. Opportunities are there.”
After graduating from Government Engineering College, Pune (COEP) in 1990, Bhagwat joined a government coaching centre in Mumbai. He later took up a well-paying CSR job at Tata Motors — not because he had abandoned the UPSC dream, but because he needed to finance it.
He studied wherever he could: on bus rides to villages he had adopted outside Pune and even on trucks carrying water to rural communities.
In 1994, before his UPSC prelims results had even been declared, he resigned.
“There was a lot of resistance. Such a lucrative job you are leaving. But it was a calculated risk,” he says.
The risk paid off.
He cleared the examination and joined the IPS in the 1995 batch. After spending his first two years in Manipur, he moved to Hyderabad in 1999.
But he never forgot what it felt like to prepare largely on his own — or how much the small acts of guidance from seniors had meant to him.
That experience would eventually shape one of the country’s largest free mentorship networks for civil services aspirants.
It started with one WhatsApp group
The origins of the initiative can be traced to another aspirant who knew exactly what that isolation felt like.
Nitish Pathode, now a Deputy Commissioner of Customs in Ahmedabad and an IRS officer, had arrived in Delhi from Chandrapur, Maharashtra, to prepare for the UPSC examination.
At the time, hundreds of Maharashtra candidates stayed at Maharashtra Sadan. But there was no common platform to help them navigate the final stage of the examination.
“Questions about what to wear, how to handle the DAF, how to face the panel — everyone navigated it alone,” Pathode recalls.
In 2015, he created a WhatsApp group initially meant for friends preparing for the personality test.
Then he began adding mentors.
One of them was Mahesh Bhagwat.
“He was very helpful,” Pathode says.
The group, eventually named the Maharashtra civil services mentorship group, continued to grow.
Today, roughly 300 Maharashtra candidates reach the UPSC interview stage every year. Around 100 are selected — and about 80 percent of those successful candidates are part of the group.
What began as one young aspirant’s attempt to solve a problem of isolation became the foundation for something much larger.
Bhagwat saw the potential of a structured, accessible mentorship network and began his own WhatsApp group for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh aspirants.
It eventually expanded into an all-India network.
The final 275 marks
Bhagwat’s focus was clear: the UPSC personality test.
The final 275 marks can determine whether a candidate joins the civil services or spends another year preparing for the examination.
His approach begins long before a candidate walks into the interview room.
Once the UPSC mains results are declared, Bhagwat reads each candidate’s Detailed Application Form, or DAF.
The document contains details about a candidate’s hometown, parents’ occupation, education, hobbies, optional subjects, work experience, service preferences and cadre preferences.
He reads every word.
“The interview does not start with national or international events. It starts with your DAF. And on that alone, a candidate can face four to five questions,” he says.
He then speaks to candidates individually, usually for 45 minutes to an hour — often before heading to work or during his commute.
Candidates record the conversations, make notes and prepare.
Once they emerge from their actual interviews, many call Bhagwat again and share the questions they were asked.
He compiles them into a growing, crowd-sourced question bank that becomes more useful with every batch.
The mentorship is intensely personal despite being delivered largely through something as simple as WhatsApp and phone calls.
Lakshmi Priya, who scored 240 out of 300 in the Indian Forest Service personality test, among the highest interview scores in recent years, received her DAF preparation session while Bhagwat was travelling.
“He gave me 30 minutes of DAF discussion questions while he was on the move,” she says. “That guidance was instrumental.”
Tejaswini Singh, who reached out to Bhagwat after seeing his post on LinkedIn, says the access to serving officers made a crucial difference.
“The programme had interaction opportunities with officers in service — providing real-world examples and insights into their workings. That is not found elsewhere.”
Then there is Ishita Kishore, who went on to secure All India Rank 1 in the UPSC Civil Services Examination.
She had heard about Bhagwat’s programme through other aspirants.
“Many people told me about Mahesh Sir’s WhatsApp group and mentorship programme,” she says. “Immediately I also reached out and asked to be added.”
But what she found was more than interview preparation.
She found a community.
“With so many coaching institutes and so much information, an aspirant is almost always confused about whom to listen to. UPSC requires you to be very focused and listen to one thing. This is where the mentorship programme comes in — it fills the trust gap.”
“This is not a commercial programme. It’s not a market. It’s a community.”
3,000 students — and Rs 15 lakh a month foregone
The scale of Bhagwat’s work becomes clearer when viewed through the economics of the UPSC coaching ecosystem.
Shubham Aggarwal, Director of Vidyapeeth IAS in Ambala and a political analyst who writes for The Times of India, has been associated with the programme for four years.
He puts a number to what Bhagwat could potentially earn from the students he mentors.
“Mahesh Bhagwat sir has around 3,000 students under his name. If each student gives him 500 rupees — which is the bare minimum, institutions charge 2,000 — within a month he would get 15 lakh rupees. But we don’t go after that.”
Instead, Bhagwat has built a model around public service rather than payment.
The results suggest what that decision has produced.
UPSC Civil Services Examination 2025
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331 of 958 selected candidates were mentored by Bhagwat’s team — more than one in three
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Three of the top 10 rankers in 2024 came from the group
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Harshita Goyal, who secured Rank 2 in 2024, was among them
UPSC CAPF 2024
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66 of 459 selected candidates were mentored through the programme
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AIR 2, 5, 13, 20 and 35 came from the group
Indian Forest Service
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The All India Rank 1 came from Bhagwat’s groups for three consecutive years
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Ritvika Pandey — AIR 1, 2023
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Kanika Anabh — AIR 1, 2024
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Basavaraj Dhareppa Kempawad — AIR 1, 2025
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In IFS 2025, 84 of 148 selected candidates — more than half — credited his mentorship
These are not the results of a single teacher working alone.
They are the result of a network.
Thirty mentors, one mission
Around Bhagwat, a team of nearly 30 mentors has developed organically.
Bhagwat remains at the centre of the process. He analyses the candidates’ DAFs and then connects them with mentors suited to their areas of preparation.
Dr Shailendra Deolankar, Director of Higher Education in Maharashtra, who holds a PhD in International Relations from JNU and has authored 22 books on foreign affairs, handles global affairs and foreign policy.
Dr Shailendra Deolankar
He conducts at least 10 sessions per batch, with each session lasting a minimum of two hours, every Sunday.
“He is a true teacher in police. By heart an educator, by heart a teacher,” says Dr Shailendra of Bhagwat.
For him, mentoring civil services aspirants is an investment in the country’s future.
“These are the assets of India — the ambassadors of this country. If we invest our time and expertise in these students, we know they are going to have the right career. That is why I consider this the most valued intellectual investment of mine.”
Aggarwal covers political science, international relations and current affairs, alongside one-on-one sessions with candidates.
At times, he conducts 500 or more individual sessions within a two- to three-month period.
He has also seen just how relentless Bhagwat’s own schedule can be.
“Since 5 AM the online newspapers appear — he starts delivering study materials to students since 5 AM, and I have seen him work at 12, 1 the next day.”
His motivation is simple.
“If I talk to a certain child and he becomes an IAS officer — what better than that?”
The network extends beyond civil services.
CAPF groups bring together retired Additional Directors General from the BSF, DIGs from the CRPF and SSB, and commandants from the CISF — serving and retired officers who mentor candidates preparing for their respective forces.
Bhagwat’s wife, herself a forest service officer, regularly sends him wildlife and ecology articles for the IFS group.
Former candidates have also become mentors. Shreyas Srivastava, who secured Rank 9 in the IFS 2020 after five attempts, is now part of the mentoring network.
Bhagwat describes his recruitment philosophy with a laugh.
“We do hunting also. He’s doing something good for students — call him, bring him.”
There is one condition.
“We don’t want anyone commercial. Even if they run paid classes elsewhere, for this interview preparation, it is free.”
When mentorship became something much bigger
For all the impressive examination statistics, perhaps the clearest picture of Bhagwat’s idea of public service comes from a candidate whose journey had little to do with rankings.
Devanand Telgote, an IIT Bombay graduate from Akola, Maharashtra, was preparing for the Indian Forest Service.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, he had travelled to Delhi for interview preparation. When the city shut down, he returned home.
Then he contracted COVID-19.
Severely.
Bhagwat arranged for him to be airlifted to KIMS Hospital in Hyderabad.
Mahesh Bhagwat with Devanand Telgote.
Devanand spent four months in the ICU, including periods on ECMO support. His chest severity score rose to 20, indicating nearly 80 percent lung damage.
His friends from IIT Bombay raised more than a crore of rupees towards his treatment. For 120 days, the hospital bill was around one lakh rupees a day.
Bhagwat continued visiting him in the hospital, wearing full PPE.
When Devanand recovered enough to attempt the examination, Bhagwat approached the UPSC with a request that he be allowed to take his personality test through video conferencing.
It was the first time the commission had made such an arrangement for a candidate.
Doctors assessed whether Devanand could speak continuously for 25 to 30 minutes.
At that point, he could not even count from one to twenty.
The interview was deferred.
Devanand eventually recovered, reappeared and secured All India Rank 112 in the Indian Forest Service on his first interview attempt.
But COVID had permanently affected his lungs.
He failed the mandatory 25-kilometre walking test twice — each time by only a few minutes.
He is now preparing for the civil services mains.
Bhagwat remains in his corner.
“The programme and especially all kinds of help provided by Bhagwat Sir have been the fulcrum on which my success relied. Sir provided constant motivation even in miserable situations like COVID-19 or failures at the interview stage,” Devanand says.
And that, perhaps, is the part of the programme that cannot be captured by selection percentages.
“He is also there for those who don’t make it,” says Lakshmi Priya. “He dedicatedly motivates people all the time.”
The same question, asked differently
The UPSC mentorship network is only one expression of Bhagwat’s larger approach to public service.
Since 2017, through Operation Smile, he has been involved in running worksite schools inside brick kilns on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
The schools serve children of migrant workers from Odisha’s Naupada, Bolangir, Kalahandi and Jajnagar districts, whose families arrive in Hyderabad every November and return home in May.
Without the schools, many of these children would spend those months working.
Across 23 operations as CID chief, he rescued 900 bonded labourers and children from hazardous brick kilns, safely repatriating them to their home districts in Odisha.
With them, they study.
As recently as June 2026, on World Day Against Child Labour, Bhagwat was continuing this work.
Across 23 operations as CID chief, he rescued 900 bonded labourers and children from hazardous brick kilns, safely repatriating them to their home districts in Odisha.
At first glance, the two parts of his work appear worlds apart.
On one side are UPSC aspirants — many of them graduates of India’s finest institutions, preparing to become civil servants.
On the other are children growing up in migrant labour communities, at risk of spending their childhoods inside brick kilns.
But Bhagwat sees a common thread.
Who gets an opportunity?
And who gets to decide?
The ripple effect
Perhaps the most powerful measure of Bhagwat’s work is not the number of candidates who clear an examination.
It is what they do afterwards.
The mentorship network has developed a pay-it-forward model in which successful candidates return as mentors themselves.
Pathode, Lakshmi Priya and Ishita Kishore plan to return as mentors.
The DGP who still answers his phone
In April 2026, Mahesh Bhagwat was promoted to Director General of Police — one of the highest ranks in Indian policing.
The promotion changed his designation.
It did not change the routine.
If you are a UPSC aspirant preparing for Civil Services, Indian Forest Service, or CAPF and wish to connect with the mentorship group, you can reach DGP Mahesh Bhagwat at [email protected] and via WhatsApp on 9908017349.
