Thiruvananthapuram, May 3: Kerala today had a civil service party after over two decades, with a lady engineer from the state topping the prestigious exam, and two doctors bagging the second and fourth spots.
Haritha V. Kumar, who hails from the state capital, bagged the first rank while the second and fourth went to V. Sriram and Albi John Varghese respectively.
The top honour has returned to the state for the first time since 1991 when Raju Narayana Swami scaled the peak.
Kumar, currently an Indian Revenue Service official, dedicated the honour to the state. “When friends told me I had secured the first rank, I thought they were playing a prank. But when I saw it on the UPSC website, I could not believe it,” she said from Faridabad where she is undergoing training.
This was the engineering graduate’s fourth and final shot at the IAS. “In the second try, I got the IRS, but the rank dropped a little in the third attempt. But I did not give up.”
Kumar isn’t a stranger to merit lists. She had bagged the seventh rank in the secondary school-leaving certificate exams (Class X).
At the family’s home in Thiruvananthapuram’s Thycaud area, there was no stopping the flood of VIPs who called on the family. “My daughter’s success can be a model for all students,” said father Vijaya Kumar, a public works contractor.
Kochi’s Sriram, who secured the second rank, is an MBBS and a post-graduate student of medicine in Cuttack. Varghese, also a doctor, works in a primary health centre in Ernakulam.
The honours for the state didn’t end with the trio. Malayalees Arun Thamburaj secured the sixth rank, Rahul the thirteenth and Tanu Priya the eighteenth in today’s results.
Swami, the 1991 topper, termed the outcome a fitting reply to all those who lamented that Malayalees had lost the competitive edge in national-level competitive exams.
In far-away Patna, Ramesh Ranjan, 26, was third-time lucky, bagging the 76th spot. “I couldn’t clear the hurdle in the first two attempts, but the third one proved lucky for me,” the communications engineer said.
Ranjan, too, has a Kerala link. The young man graduated from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kozhikode.
Another engineer from Bihar figures on the list of successful candidates — Nishant Kumar, 26. The IIT Roorkee graduate secured the 148th position.
