Amit Saini of Chandigarh who has stood IInd

New Delhi, May 14
Mutyalaraju Revu, an OBC candidate from a small village, has topped the highly competitive civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission at a time when the country debates the issue of reservation for OBCs in higher education.

Revu, 27-year-old son of a farmer in small village in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, has surpassed 473 successful candidates including 214 general category qualifiers to top the merit list.

His uncle Venkanna was all praise for Revu, who is currently serving in the Andhra Pradesh police. Revu, who has always been a brilliant student, has done his Masters in Electronics from the premier Indian Institute of Sciences (IISC), Bangalore.

“I am really thrilled after hearing about Revu topping the examination. I had a word with him and he is equally thrilled as well. It’s a great news for all our family members,” Venkanna told IANS from west Godavari district on telephone.

There were some 200,000 applicants who appeared for the examination and only 474 finally qualified - a selection rate of a mere 0.237 percent. Of the selected candidates 373 are males and 101 females.

The list of the successful candidates includes 214 general category aspirants, 144 from OBC, 80 scheduled castes candidates and 36 from the scheduled tribes.

A total of 18 physically challenged candidates qualified the October-November 2006 Main examination and the April-May 2007 personality test, and they include 13 general category candidates, three OBCs and two scheduled caste members.

The successful candidates generally get appointment in the four categories of services — the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Central Services Group A and B.

"Appointment to the various services will be made according to the number of vacancies available," the UPSC said in a statement.

The number of vacancies reported by the government is 89 for the IAS, 20 for the IFS, 103 for the IPS and 294 and 27 respectively for Group A and Group B of central services.

Apart from Revu, others who made it to the top 10 of the merit list are: Amit Saini, Alok Tiwari, Prasanth N., Shashank Misra, Vyasan R., Anish Rajan, Anindita Mitra, Aravind Agrawal and Juhi Mukherjee. — IANS