Updated on: Saturday, June 22, 2013
The famed 'Super-30' churned out 28 success stories this year, increasing its count by one from 2012. With JEE Advanced 2013 results declared on Friday evening, the Super-30 initiative under which 30 poor IIT aspirants are coached free of cost by state's maths wizard Anand Kumar and his team every year, wrote yet another tale of success.
Mentor and the man behind it all, Anand Kumar's happiness knew no bounds as once again his students proved why they were called 'super'. Being born in underprivileged families did not thwart their dreams in any way, as wards of daily wage earners, roadside vendors, private tutors or magazine vendors, all made it to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), courtesy Super-30.
"We had advised the students to brush up their basics. They should be well versed with the how and why of every topic," insisted Kumar.
The atmosphere at Kumar's house was overwhelming, with parents overjoyed by the achievements of their wards and students touching their guru's feet. Defying all odds, Pankaj Kumar Singh, son of a landless farmer, got rank 8 in the handicapped (general) category leaving behind his peers from the group.
Hard work also paid off for Bhanu Pratap, son of a worker from Uttar Pradesh Rampyare Pratap, Pranav Kumar from Samastipur, whose father is a landless farmer, Hajipur's Ankit, whose father was a lineman in telephone department and was killed in a road accident last year, a mechanic's son Abhishek Kumar, Sanjeev Mallik from Mahubani and driver's son Santosh Kumar, among others.
Tears in the eyes of several parents said the tales of their happiness and gratitude. A proud Afsar Nath Mishra, a Sanskrit teacher and priest from Banka, held the hands of his daughter Preeti Kumari and said, "I don't know how she studied and what she studied. I could not even afford her a dress."
Earlier, in a bid to silence critics, Super 30 founder Anand Kumar had released the list of all 30 students with their roll numbers and relevant details. He said like previous years, he had released the list to maintain utmost transparency in what he has been doing for 11 years without any financial assistance from any outside agency.
Last year, 27 of the 30 students were selected for IITs and Super-30 has contributed over 260 students to the premier engineering institute of the country so far. In 2003, 18 of the 30 students came out with flying colours while the number of successful candidates went up to 22 the next year. In 2005, 26 of the Super-30 students made it to IITs while 28 each got through the exam in 2006 and 2007. Kumar and his team saw a high from 2008 to 2010 with all their 30 students making it to the list of successful candidates every year.