BSEB gets joint toppers for Class 10

PATNA: If you find the ‘girls-outshine-boys’ headlines hackneyed even if that has been the fact in most of the competitions and examinations, here’s something different: Only 12 girls as against 29 boys made it to the merit list of 15 top scorers in the Class X exam conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board ( BSEB).

Here’s more: the unsuccessful students included 1.56 lakh girls as against only 1.43 lakh boys. But then 5.32 lakh boys as against 3.99 lakh girls took the exam. Thus, the girls’ pass percentage is better than that of the boys.

A boy and a girl scored 460/500 each to share the topper’s slot. They are Kundan Kumar of Janata High School-Sitamarhi and Shalini Yadav of Ghanshyam Balika High School-Khagaul.

Shekhar Suman of Adsar (Jamui) ranked 2nd with 455 while Sanjeet Kumar, Mohd Gufran Alam and Himanshu Kumar of Hajipur, Rosera and Samastipur respectively had to be content with third position with 454 each.

State HRD minister P K Shahi released the merit list on Wednesday. Of the 9.31 lakh students, 6.21 lakh passed. “The overall pass percentage is thus a little over 67,” the minister said.

The first divisioners numbered 1,43,864 lakh while 3,04,385 lakh and 1,72,971 lakh students secured second and third division respectively.

Magadh division came out with flying colours with 74.11% of the students from the division passing the exam followed by Munger division (73.03%). The pass percentage of Patna division is 66.86, Purnia 56.26, Bhagalpur 55.16, Kosi 61.35, Tirhut 64.17%, Darbhanga 65.9 and that of Saran division is 70.54.

Shahi expressed pleasure over the stellar performance of students belonging to obscure, remote areas. “This betrays the success of the state government’s schemes such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in spreading awareness about education,” he said.