Two from city among top 100

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 1

After the success of Amit Pal Sharma (Rank 17) and Ayush Garg (Rank 65) last year, the city has a reason to celebrate again this year with city lads Sagar Setia and Taranjot Singh clinching all-India rank 66 and 70, respectively, in the UPSC civil services exams. Both of them have cleared the exam in their third attempt.

Sagar (25) did his schooling from Sadul Shahar, Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, and pursued his Bachelors in Architecture from Lovely School of Architecture and Designing, Phagwara. He pursued his Masters in Town Planning from the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University CEPT, Ahmedabad.

His father Avinash Chander is a Vastu consultant and mother Usha Devi a retired teacher.

Sagar said he decided to get into Civil Services during his postgraduation. “While we were making plans and doing the ground work for town planning, I actually realised that the decision-making was in the hands of bureaucrats. Even a professor during my post-graduation convinced me to go for civil services,” he said. His optional subject for the exam was anthropology.

Giving a piece of advice to aspirants, he says there are four components to preparation. “First, one should build a strong base of knowledge. One can have a better perspective of articles on current issues if one has strong knowledge base about all fields. Second, one should know what to read and what not to. Then, one should follow what the syllabus is about. Lastly, one should have personal satisfaction with what one writes in the paper and speaks in the interview. It should be comprehensive,” he said.

Taranjot Singh (26) completed is matriculation from Guru Nanak Public School, Mullanpur, and Class XII from DAV Public School, BRS Nagar. He had scored 93 per cent marks in Class XII. He made it to the IIT Roorkie where he completed his BTech degree in Mechanical Engineering. Though he had nursed the civil services dream right from his school days, it was during his BTech at the IIT when he decided that he would go for civil services. “I decided to become a civil servant because of the nature of the job. I wanted to do work that is more meaningful, purposeful and directly contributes to social welfare. This will be more satisfying for me,” says Taranjot.

He took coaching from Delhi. His father, Dr Santokh Singh, runs Preet Nursing Home at Hambran and mother Karamjit Kaur is a government pharmacist.

Choice of the subject should be made wisely, he says. “I had taken public administration as my optional subject in both attempts but this time, I decided totake the exam with mechanical engineering as optional subject, and cleared the exam,” he says.

Last year, he got all-India rank 72 in the GATE exam and also scored Rank 4 in the IES. He joined the ONGC this year and is undergoing training in Dehradun, his father said.

“Though we wanted him to become a doctor initially, we are now happy as he has achieved this mark in life, following his dream,” he added.