Bihar arts topper arrested for fudging age, result scrapped
PATNA: Forced by a public outcry over the failure of 65% of the intermediate examinees of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) this year, and the apparent contradictions in the toppers list, officials late on Friday evening arrested arts topper Ganesh Kumar after it was found that he had fudged his age.
Earlier in the evening the BSEB struck down the result of Ganesh. A student of RNSJN Utkramit Madhya Vidyalaya in Samastipur, he was declared the topper of class 12 examination from arts stream securing 82.6%.
Ganesh was arrested after being called to the BSEB office, chairman Anand Kishor said.
Kishor said Ganesh’s actual age was 42 years but he had declared it as 24. “We have lodged an FIR against him. His result and candidature stand suspended,” said Kishor.
The BSEB has also served him a showcause asking him to explain his conduct within three days. With the cancellation of Ganesh’s result, Neha Kumari of LNGRS Plus Two Girl’s School, Rajnagar, Madhubani, is likely to elevated as topper. She secured 80.6% marks.
This is the second year in succession when BSEB has been forced to annul the result of arts topper. In 2016, Ruby Rai, the topper in the intermediate Arts stream, was arrested after it was found that the merit list had been fudged and her answer papers had been managed against a payment made to board officials.
Ganesh, who topped Bihar in the humanities stream in class 12 examination for 2017, doesn’t know the difference between prose and poetry. Ganesh who also topped music, does not know the difference between sur (notes) and taal (meter). Questions were also raised on his musical abilities.
Ganesh’s marksheet showed he scored 92 in Hindi, 78 in second language, 83 in music, 80 in history, 80 in social studies and 59 in psychology.