Disciple is third, coach is 167th in UPSC

Civil Services examinations never cease to surprise us. Ronanki Gopala Krishna, whose parents are agricultural labourers and who wrote the exams in Telugu, has bagged the third rank in this year’s IAS examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission, while his mentor and coach Mallavarapu Bala Latha bagged the 167th rank.

Bala Latha, a physically challenged woman, got the 399th rank in Civil Services examinations in 2005, taught and mentored Gopala Krishna at an IAS coaching institute at Ashok Nagar in Hyderabad.

Latha is currently posted in the Central Debt Recovery Tribunal as recovery officer in Hyderabad.

Gopala Krishna was from a small village, Parasamba, in Palasa mandal of backward Srikakulam district in the north coastal region of Andhra Pradesh. He walked 15km every day for his high school education in nearby Brahmanatarla village. He did a teacher training course later.

“There was no power in my home till I completed my Intermediate. I studied under kerosene lamps. We were so poor that I had to take up a government teacher’s job in 2005 as my parents depend on me,” Gopala Krishna told The Sunday Guardian.

Gopala Krishna’s family had to face a sort of social boycott in the village because of his father’s decision to get his three children including his elder sister educated.

Gopala had chosen Telugu Literature as the optional subject in the mains and even faced the interview in Telugu with the help of a translator.

Gopala Krishna took coaching for general studies from CSB institute under the mentorship of Bala Latha. It is she who took care of him in the last one and a half year and helped him get the material in Telugu medium. “I am very happy for Gopala Krishna bagging All India 3rd rank,” Bala Latha told this newspaper. Indian intelligence officials believe that last week’s terror strike in Kabul, in which a truck bomb went off in one of the most secure areas of Afghanistan’s capital housing diplomatic establishments, shows that the US administration has miserably failed to curb the Haqqani network’s terror fund-raising capacity from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), despite its consistent efforts since the late 2000s. Eighty people died in the latest strike.

The Afghan intelligence