Kota magic missing this year

Kota magic missing this year - India - The Times of India

Rao Jaswant Singh, TNN, May 27, 2010, 03.24am IST
Tags:India|kota magic missing
KOTA: The famous coaching hub in the country for IIT-JEE — Kota — lost its sheen on Wednesday. As the entrance results were out during the day, not a single student from the city's premier coaching institutes managed to secure a position in the top 15 of the All India Rankers (AIR). The institutes, which are now a brand name and attract thousands of students across the country, have missed the bus for the first time in the last 14 years.

The top rank from Kota went to Sanchar Sharma (AIR 16) of Jodhpur, who attended coaching classes at the newly launched Vibrant Academy. The next topper from the coaching hub, Mehul Kumar (AIR 19) of Jaipur, studied at Resonance Classes. Sanket Satish Totala of Aurangabad, who bagged AIR 20, also took coaching at Vibrant Academy. The silver lining though is that over 4,000 students from Kota have cleared the exams.

The biggest setback was for Bansal Classes, which has been the pioneer in the IIT coaching industry and has been producing maximum number of toppers every year since 1997. It failed to make a mark in the top 20 with its topper Sameer Kumar Agarwal securing AIR 23.

Commenting on the performance, P K Bansal of Bansal Classes said it is shocking that not only Kota but the whole northern region has no top ranker. "We are unable to understand why none of their candidates got place in top 10," he said. In 2007, three students (first, third and seventh rank) were in the top 10 list. In 2008, it was six students (first, second, fifth, sixth, ninth and 10th rank). In 2009, it was three students (second, seventh and 10th rank). Sources said error in question paper instructions and deleting Kota from the list of examination centres could be reasons behind Kota's "unexpected" performance.