One is from Delhi, while the other two hail from West Bengal and Punjab, respectively. Two of them were St Stephen’s students, while the third is an engineer. Women have now occupied the top three spots in the UPSC Civil Services Exam for the first time in seven years.
Shruti Sharma of Delhi topped the merit list issued on Monday for the 2021 test, followed by Ankita Agarwal of Kolkata and Gamini Singla of Anandpur Sahib in Punjab. Ira Singhal, Renu Raj, and Nidhi Gupta were the top three students in the 2014 test, with Vandana Rao finishing in fourth.
This year’s topper attended Delhi’s Sardar Patel Vidyalaya and graduated with honours in history from St Stephen’s College. She enrolled at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for post-graduation before dropping out to study for the Civil Services Exam, mostly through Jamia Millia Islamia’s free Residential Coaching Academy (RCA).
Sharma was competing for the second time, and she is the first in her family to qualify. Sunil Dutt Sharma, her father, is an architect who operates a building firm in Delhi. Rachna Sharma, her mother, is a former teacher.
Her family is from Uttar Pradesh — her father is from Bijnor, and her mother is from Bulandshahr — which is why the state is her first choice for a cadre.
Ankita Agarwal, a St Stephen’s graduate who is presently training for the Indian Revenue Service in Faridabad, is next on the list of high scorers. In her third attempt, she passed the IAS.
Agarwal, 26, studied economics in college and runs a company in Kolkata with her parents.
Gamini Singla, who came in third place, graduated from Punjab Engineering College (PEC) in Chandigarh with a BTech in computer science and sociology as an elective.
Singla, 23, claimed her father, Dr. Alok Singla, and mother, Dr. Neeraj Singla, both Himachal government medical personnel, were instrumental in her success. “The true driving force behind me was my father.” Every day, he studied books and newspapers with me in order to assist me in preparation for crucial themes,” she explained. Tushar Singla, her younger brother, is an IIT-Kharagpur graduate.
Apart from the top three, the lady who holds the All-India Rank (AIR) 8 is Delhi’s Ishita Rathi, who qualified in her third try.
Rathi earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from Lady Shri Ram College and her master’s degree in economics from Madras School of Economics. She worked for a big firm for a year before leaving to study for the exam.
This time, a total of 685 individuals qualified for the Civil Services, 508 males and 177 women. In 2020, there were 545 men and 216 women on the list of qualifiers. In 2019, a similar trend emerged, with 632 men and 197 women qualifying.
Aishwarya Verma and Utkarsh Dwivedi finished fourth and fifth overall this time, respectively, behind the three women’s winners.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the selected applicants on Twitter, writing that they “are commencing on their administrative careers at a critical period in India’s development path, when we are observing Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.”
