Kathihar (Bihar): As Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) declared the results of the coveted Civil Services Examination 2020, Shubham Kumar, who topped the list said that he was not expecting to make it to the list.
A B.Tech graduate in civil engineering from IIT Bombay, Kumar qualified the examination with anthropology as his optional subject in his third attempt. He gave his first attempt in 2018, and in his second attempt in 2019 got 290th rank and was inducted into Indian Defence account Service.
Speaking to ETV Bharat, Kumar expressed his happiness and said that, "I am very happy and I feel very good because I gave as much as I could from my side. I myself was not sure that I would be able to do it this time." He further said that he was not very much confident about clearing the exam as he could not answer many questions well in the main exam.
A native of Kathihar, Kumar did his schooling at Vidya Vihar Residential School, Purnia. Later got admitted to Chinmaya Vidyalaya Bokaro where he passed his 12th with 98 per cent marks and started preparing for UPSC after his graduation from IIT Bombay.
A total of 761 candidates, 545 men and 216 women, cleared the examination and were recommended for various civil services by the Commission, according to a statement issued by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).
The civil services examination is conducted by the UPSC in three stages, preliminary, main and interview to select officers of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS), among others.
The Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2020 was conducted on October 4 last year. As many as 10,40,060 candidates applied for the examination, out of whom 4,82,770 appeared, the statement said.
A total of 10,564 candidates qualified for appearance in the written (main) examination, which was held in January 2021. Of them, 2,053 candidates qualified for the personality test (interview).
