Sandeep, 29, daughter of Ranjit Singh, a peon in the revenue department here, has given Punjab reasons to feel proud by attaining the 138 rank in the open merit list of the All India Civil Services Examination. She is from the Scheduled Caste reserved category and hopes to better her rank in the reserved category list, which is yet to be declared.
“I am proud to be a peon’s daughter and I want my father to complete his service with full dignity. I owe my success to my parents and god. Despite meagre resources, my father provided the best facilities to me,” said Sandeep.
“I was very motivated after seeing the serial ‘Udaan’, the tale of a lower middle class girl who became an Indian Police Service officer.”
While recounting her difficult days, Sandeep, a civil engineer, said: “After completing my engineering, I first wanted to do a job to become economically independent before starting preparations for IAS. But for two continuous years, I did not find any job, as there were very few opportunities for girls in the civil engineering sector.
“There was nobody to guide me and we did not have enough money to pay the hefty fees of coaching classes. Therefore, I made the first two attempts (2005 and 2006) without taking any formal coaching,” she pointed out.
Thereafter, her father took a bank loan to fund the cost of coaching institutes. She took coaching at Chandigarh, Patiala and New Delhi.
Despite her engineering background, she meticulously chose the subjects of sociology and Punjabi literature. In 2007, she missed the main exam by a whisker. She got 933 marks whereas the cut-off was 936.
Since the declaration of results last week, Sandeep’s house has been abuzz with mediapersons. Members of her family are upbeat.
“We are from a small town of Punjab with very few resources but still my daughter has successfully cleared one of the most difficult exams of the country. The whole town is proud of her and I cannot express my feelings in words,” a proud Amarjit Kaur, remarked Sandeep’s mother.