Top Honours for Odias in Civil Services Exam

BHUBANESWAR: Odias are back on the UPSC honours board. With seven of them making it to the top 100 this year, the performance of aspirants from the State has been one of the best in recent times.

Twentyfour-year-old Muhammed Abdaal Akhtar, a Law Graduate, notched up the 35th rank, while Pamela Satpathy, an Assistant Professor of Nursing, has bagged the 51st rank in the UPSC examination, results of which were announced on Saturday. Both Abdaal and Pamela are from the City.

Others who made it to top ranks included Lingaraj Panda (38th), Kranthi Kumar Pati (50th), Prabhat Mallick (68th), Smrutiranjan Mohanty (87th), Sandip Kumar Mallik (102nd), Arunanshu Giri (133rd), Avishek Tripathy (151st), Soumya Mishra (177th), Padmini Sahoo (199th), Susant Kumar Mishra (237th), Ashis Kumar Panda (276th) and Satarupa Mishra (303rd).

Abdaal, a graduate from NALSAR Law University, Hyderabad, cracked the UPSC in his second attempt.

Speaking to Express, Abdaal said he was delighted to have secured a rank below 40 in the all-India list in the second attempt. “Some of my seniors at NALSAR who cleared Civil Services motivated me to take the UPSC exams. Besides, my parents have always been an inspiration and the hidden force behind my success,” Abdaal said. He is the son of Additional Member of the Railway Board Muhammed Akhtar.

Pamela, an Assistant Professor with School of Nursing of SOA University, made it to the list in her fourth attempt. She had secured a rank for the Allied Services last year but took the test again and achieved what she had always wanted to.

“I am thankful to God for the success but owe it to my parents and husband who are the support system,” she said. Married for three years, Pamela lives in a joint family but was never distracted from her goal. She devoted three to five hours every day for the UPSC preparations after her teaching work. Born and brought up in Sunabeda, she is the daughter of a Defence Research and Development Organisation officer.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik expressed happiness over the success of candidates from Odisha in Civil Services examination. He congratulated all sucessful candidates and said this will inspire others to get into Civil Services. He announced that all successful candidates will be felicitated at a State level function every year.

This year, the UPSC examination was held for 1,364 posts with 180 posts for Indian Administrative Service, 32 for Indian Foreign Service, 150 for Indian Police Service and 710 and 292 posts for Central Services - Group A and Group B respectively.

The written examinations were conducted on by the UPSC in December, 2014 and the interviews for personality tests held in between April and June this year.

Women Bag Top Four Ranks

New Delhi: Ira Singhal, a physically challenged IRS officer from Delhi, topped the Civil Services examination in which the top four positions went to women. She is the first physically challenged woman to achieve the milestone. Suffering from scoliosis, a spine-related disorder, 31-year-old Ira, an IRS officer, clinched the top position in her sixth attempt.

Singhal topped the examination in the general category followed by Renu Raj, a doctor from Kerala, and Nidhi Gupta, also an Indian Revenue Service officer from Delhi, who secured second and third positions respectively, according to the results announced by Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Saturday. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his congratulation to the successful candidates. The Prime Minister took to twitter to share his message. “Congratulations to all those who successfully cleared the Civil Services Exam & my best wishes as you begin the journey to serve the nation,” he wrote. 

(Corrigendum: A previous version of the story erroneously mentioned that Ananya Das, the 16th rank holder in UPSC results, belongs to Odisha. The error is regretted.)

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