Banaras Hindu University girls steal the show at 99th convocation ceremony

VARANASI: Girls of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) stole the show at the 99th convocation ceremony by outshining boys and bagging most gold medals on Monday. Out of the 26 medalists, 17 were girls.
Shikha Dubey and Chandra Kant Pandey hogged the limelight by bagging the highest number of medals, including the chancellor’s medal, Late Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh medal and BHU gold medal for securing highest CGPA.
Shikha, a native of Kanpur, said, “It feels extraordinary. What’s amazing is that I got gold medals here and also a call from my professor at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) to join the varsity as a researcher in radar signal processing, machine learning and vision lab at South Korea.” She has recently completed her internship at University in Gwangju after pursuing M.Sc in computational science and applications in signal processing.
Chandra Kant Pandey, a native of Singrauli district in MP, aims to pursue his masters from BHU and pursue research work in jyotish. “Sanskrit is one subject that has so much to explore. I have read a lot about granth (Sanskrit text) — ‘Vaimanika Shastra’ (science of aeronautics) which is intriguing and reveals how flying vehicles were made of gems in those days. I am trying to find this text so I can complete my research in it,” he said.
Gold medalist in BDS, Shlagha Parasher said she was looking forward to her post graduation.
Vini Tiwari, who won a gold in B.Sc (botany) said she had been a topper all her life yet this was special. “I am currently pursuing M.Sc in neuroscience from National Brain Research Centre and wish to do research in oncology,” she said. Drishty Mukherjee said she had just returned after being offered fellowship from Sweden and would now pursue research in women empowerment while Deep Rashmi was pursuing her PhD from Bihar Agricultural College and wished to become a scientist.
Kislay Tripathi said he was pursuing LLB from Lucknow University and wished to become a lawyer while Neha Mishra wished to pursue research work in Sanskrit. Vilina Patra, who bagged a medal in M.Mus (vocal), said she wished to become a classical vocalist.