Residents of Bidar, tired of reading headlines such as ‘Bidar retains last position in PU results’, were in for a pleasant surprise on Saturday, when Vachana Shree Patil of Shaheen PU College secured the third place in the Common Entrance Test in the medical stream.
She also stood second in the State in the Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy, third in Veterinary sciences, ninth in B. Pharma and 18th in BSc. Agriculture. Her ranking in the engineering stream is 164.
Her friends and college mates celebrated her success by parading her over their shoulders, bursting crackers and distributing sweets.
Between smiling for cameras and responding to scores of congratulatory calls on her father’s mobile phones, she told The Hindu that the last two years had been full of hard work.
“Not that I did not enjoy it. But there was nothing much in my life other than studies,” she said.
Her home does not have a TV and she has never used a mobile phone, in the last two years, even during school vacations.
Born in Ballari, Ms. Vachana lived with her grandmother Sharadamma, till she was 16. “She is more mature than girls of her age,” says Ms. Sharadamma. “In Class 9, she won 18 prizes in studies, sports and cultural activities. Even now, I knew she would do well in all subjects.” Ms. Vachana passed SSLC from Nalanda Vidya Niketan high school in Ballari with 96 per cent marks.
Basava Kumar Patil, her father, is a Bidar-based advocate and founder of the Kalyan Karnataka Pratishtana that works in the field of education.
“She never let herself get distracted and that has to her success,” he said.
Abdul Quadeer, Shaheen College secretary, said that Ms. Vachana has been unlike other students.
“She has been extremely punctual, and never wasted time. Once she told me that she was wasting 26 minutes on her commute in the bus. I told her father and he arranged a separate auto for her. Another day, I went to her house on Holi and found her studying at home while her other classmates and children were playing in the street,” Mr. Quadeer said.
Shaheen College also produced two other toppers— M. Abdul Rehman who got the 23rd rank and M. Sohail Ahmed who won the 25th rank.
There are three other students within 200 ranks, college authorities said.
