College of Agriculture students crack entrance exams, including IIM-A

NAGPUR: In a huge achievement, 44 students from the College of Agriculture (CoA) run by the Akola-based Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth (PDKV) have cleared the entrance examination for the post graduate (PG) degree in agriculture in national institutes under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). This includes a girl student, Pratima Bharti, who happens to be the first student from the university to clear IIM Ahmedabad.
Nine students have cleared ICAR's Junior Research Fellow (JRF) exam, and all of them are in the first eleven positions in open and reserved categories, which would earn them scholarships of over Rs1 lakh year each. Interestingly, none of the nine JRF students and the three students who cleared for MBA entrance belong to the city, region or even state. They had all got admissions in BSc through national ICAR entrance examination and hence belong to different states. Only 23 students from Maharashtra have cleared the ICAR institutions exam, and can get admissions in any of the State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) across India.
"It is definitely a great achievement for the students but it is also a great honour for the college. There are 83 students from other four agriculture colleges in Akola who cleared various national exams like the national ICAR institutions PG exam and MBA entrance in colleges across India. But CoA is a single college from where 44 students cleared these exams," said associate dean Prof VS Gonge.
Bharti, the first girl student from PDKV to get admission into IIM, belongs to a small village Navada in Rajamouli district in Bihar. This small village girl has very big dreams and wants to fulfil it in as short time as possible. "My father is a small pharmacist and mother a housewife. But I always dreamt big. I do not consider myself to be very brainy or sharp, but I work very hard. I slept just 3-4 hours a day. I am leaving open the option of becoming a successful entrepreneur or manager in a firm," she told TOI.
Similarly, Kundan Kumar, who cleared the MBA entrance of MANAGE, one of the top ten institutes in management, too belongs to Bihar, hailing from Gaya. He cleared the Agricultural Business Management (ABM) entrance, where the institute has 100% placement and students get a starting package of Rs 38-40 lakhs. The third student, Namrita Sharma is from Kota in Rajasthan and always wanted to enter the Institute of Rural Management at Anand in Gujarat, and she has made it.
Of the nine JRFs, Mahesh Kumar Samota hails from Rajasthan and is second in OBC category, Vinty Dubey from Jharkhand is third in general category, K Suvidya from Madhya Pradesh and Lavanya Bhovare from Telangana got through at ABM, Shekhar Kumar is fifth in SC category and Gulab Pathak from Bihar is 9th in general category.