NAMAKKAL/COIMBATORE: Setting a new performance benchmark, students from the western Namakkal district bagged all the top three official ranks in the Tamil Nadu State Board Plus Two examinations on Tuesday. This is the first time students from one district have cornered all the ranks.
While S Sushmitha of SKV Higher Secondary School at Kanthampalayam near Tiruchengode emerged the topper scoring 1,189 marks out of 1,200 marks; three students from the district shared the second rank and two candidates were tied in the third position.
An excited Sushmitha, who hails from Palladam in Tirupur district, said “I expected to secure a State rank but surely not the first. It is a surprise for me.” She scored full marks in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics and 195 marks in English and 194 in Tamil. Two other SKV HSS students D Karthika (1,188 marks) and B Prabha Sankari (1,187) secured the second and third ranks respectively.
The remaining rankers from the district were P Ashok Kumar of Greenpark Matriculation HSS and C Manikandan of Vivekanandha HSS (both second rank); and P Maheshwari of Vidhya Vikas Girls HSS who came third. However, the highest aggregate of 1,190 marks in the examination was scored by S Swapna of Puducherry and V Pavithra of Chennai. Since they had taken a subject other than Tamil as their ‘First Language Paper’, they are not recognised among the official top rankers.
Interestingly, schools in the western districts have produced three “rankers” in this category (non-Tamil) too. Coimbatore boy P Rahul Jain, a student of the SBOA Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Chokkampudur who studied French as the First Language, has bagged the second rank with an aggregate score of 1,189 marks.
R Maheema Bhen of SRV Girls HSS in Rasipuram who studied Sanskrit shared the second rank. S Kanushiya and C M Kirithika, both students of the Salem-based Cluny Matriculation Higher Secondary School, were tied in the third position along with over half-a-dozen other students from different parts of Tamil Nadu.