CHANDIGARH, Feb 5— Kanish Mirchia at 13 is the youngest boy to hold the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) status in the country by clearing the Developing Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic-5 on February 3.

The Panchkula-based Kanish, son of a doctor couple, Rajiv and Sudha, is a student of Class VIII of St. John’s High School, Chandigarh.

Before him, two Allahabad-based girls, Subia Hashmat and Supriya Singh, had become the MCP in 1999 when they were 11 and 12, respectively. Two Jaipur boys, Govind Jajoo and Akshat Singhal, too cleared this examination in 1999 when they were 14.

Kanish, known as Kanu to his friends and family members, cleared the one-hour-fortyfive-minute examination in 15 minutes at the Sector 8 centre of Microuniv. He scored 847 marks out of the maximum of 1000. He scored 100 per cent marks in the debugging section and 94 per cent in the design issues section.

He is into computers from the age of seven, when his father brought home an out-of-order computer from his clinic. With a little help from a family friend, Kanish was able to set the computer right and then there was no stopping him. He has already done courses in VB6, SQL server and C language. He is currently learning e-commerce.

Kanish would have become an MCP two years ago if two Delhi-based leading computer centres had not stuck to the typical red-tapism. He was refused admission on the plea that the minimum educational qualification was 10 plus two. While his parents, who knew nothing about computers, could not help him, Kanish feels obliged to Mr Saurabh Tangri, a computer professional and a family friend.