BHUBANESWAR: More than 15 candidates from Odisha have made it through the Civil Services Examination-2022, the results of which were declared by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Tuesday. Jagatsinghpur’s Anup Das topped the list securing 38th rank followed by Bhubaneswar’s Praniti Dash at 42nd and Bhadrak’s Kasturi Panda at 67th. Anup, presently, is a serving income tax officer posted at New Delhi while Praniti has this year completed her MPhil in Economics from Cambridge University at UK. Kasturi is an OAS trainee.
For Anup, this was his fourth attempt at the civil services examination. While he did not qualify in 2017 and 2018, the alumnus of BJB College and Delhi University secured the 120 rank in 2019 to qualify for the IRS. “I appeared for the exam again to improve my rank and managed to do so this time. I had always wished to work for the Indian Foreign Service and with the 38th rank, I am looking forward to it now,” said Anup.
He added that proper planning and daily practice helped him improve the rank. “I had taken IAS coaching during my previous attempt in 2019. This time, I had no time for coaching because I am a field officer. So I decided to devote whatever time I had for practising the syllabus daily,” he said. Zoology was his subject for Mains.
Like Anup, Praniti and Kasturi scored their ranks without any coaching help and only by self-study. For Praniti, it was her uncle - Justice Debabrata Das of Orissa High Court - who inspired her to pursue civil services. A student of DAV-Pokhariput, she pursued her MSc from King’s University College in the UK and MPhil in Economics from Cambridge through scholarships. This was her second attempt at the prestigious exam.
“My first attempt was in 2020. But since I could not qualify then, I decided to give all my time to revision, practice and mock tests during this attempt. My subject in the Mains was economics,” Praniti said. Odisha, she said, will be her preferred state. Kasturi, too, attempted the civil services exam for the second time. A 2019-batch engineering (computer science) graduate from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, she qualified for Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) in September last year. She is currently undergoing training. After an unsuccessful first attempt at the civil services in 2019, she took up sociology this time for her Mains.
“It was a personal decision not to take help from any coaching centre for both my attempts at UPSC and the OAS. Because, I feel that no one can train you to develop an approach towards learning the subjects that you choose. I gave my 100 pc to practising my subject every day,” she said. Coming from an engineering background, opting for sociology as her subject was a calculated decision. “I felt the syllabus in humanities was less and I could prepare it on my own. The subject was related too,” she said. For OAS, she appeared in home science.
Sources said this is the highest number of Odisha candidates clearing the prestigious examination for appointment to IAS, IFS, IPS and Central Service groups A and B.Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik congratulated all the successful candidates. “May they work with dedication to take welfare initiatives and citizen- centric programmes to the grassroots. Wish them bright careers ahead,” the chief minister tweeted.