Krishna Uppuluri & Ritu Raj/ Zee Research Group
Contrary to what has become the norm in the recent past, this year boys have left behind girls in the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) examinations with the top three ranks going to them. Also, this is for the third time in a row that a candidate who is already in the central services has topped the civil services examination.
This year has also seen the highest intake ever at 1,122 candidates while there are 1,228 vacancies.
Gaurav Agrawal has secured the top position in the UPSC Civil Services (Main) exam 2013. Bharti Dixit stood fifth, securing the highest rank among women candidates.
This is the first time in four years that a male candidate has topped the prestigious examination. Women had bagged the top slots in the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Civil Services Examinations. They were Haritha V Kumar (2012), Shena Aggarwal (2011) and S Divyadharshini (2010).
While Gaurav Agrawal had achieved a rank of 244 in the 2012 examination, Haritha V Kumar had achieved 294 (2011) and Shena Aggarwal had achieved 305 in the previous examination (2010). This goes on to prove that experience is needed to top the highly coveted examination.
While Gaurav Agrawal was training to become an Indian Police Service officer from his previous rank, Haritha V Kumar and Shena Aggarwal were both training to become Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers. This was Gaurav’s second attempt.
This is also the first time in the last four years that there is no girl in the top three ranks. In the last three exam results there were at least two girls in the top three. In the 2010, 2011 and 2012 rankings, there were two girls in the top three.
The second position was secured by Munish Sharma, while Rachit Raj and Akshay Tripatji stood third and fourth, respectively. The other five candidates who bagged the top ten ranks include Sakshi Sawhney, Chanchal Rana, Johny Tom Varghese, Divyanshu Jha, and Medha Roopam.
Although women could not achieve the success that they did in the last three examinations, their performance in the top 25 ranks has almost equaled last year’s performance.
This year there are 15 males and 10 females in top 25 positions. In 2012, amongst top 25 candidates there were 13 male and 12 female candidates.
In results of both this year and last year, there have been more female candidates than in 2011 (five females) and 2010 (six females).
While 517 candidates have cleared the examination in the general category, 326 belong to Other Backward Classes, 187 Scheduled Caste and 92 to Scheduled Tribe categories. As many as 180 candidates have made it to the highly-coveted IAS, 32 to Indian Foreign Services and 150 to Indian Police Service.
The maximum number of candidates (710) has been selected for Central Services Group ‘A’ and the rest (156) to Group ‘B’ Services.
