JEE Advanced 2017: Jharkhand IAS officer’s free coaching helps 6 students to fulfil IIT dream

A Jharkhand IAS officer’s free-of-cost coaching to six IIT aspirants, including a tribal and an OBC boy, in Ranchi achieved 100% results on Sunday after all of them cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced 2017.

KK Khandelwal, the transport and civil aviation secretary of Jharkhand, took out time from his busy schedule to teach physics and mathematics to the students from 2015 till the exam date last year.

The performance of a candidate in JEE (Advanced) forms the basis for admission to the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology across the country and the Indian School of Mines (ISM) in Dhanbad.

The 54-year-old officer selected the students on the basis of a written test in October 2014. And since then, he has coached them for the competitive exam at a private school campus in the state capital whenever he found time from his work.

Among his students, Yash Raj bagged All India Rank or AIR 224, Aranya Aryaman AIR 570, Mayank Kumar AIR 827, and Amitanshu Kumar secured the 2814th position. Rai Apurav Nath and Mayank Kumar Meena secured the AIR 3210 and 3624 respectively.

“I have always enjoyed teaching, probably, this is the reason I managed to find time for the students after my day’s work. The time I spent with the kids reenergised me,” Khandelwal said.

“I cannot express in words how I feel; it is a wonderful feeling when your students achieve something,” added the 1988 batch Indian Administrative Service officer.

However, this is not the first time that he has helped a student bag a berth in the prestigious IITs. In 2013, he coached his son Anupam who secured AIR 9 – the best rank secured by any student from the state in the exam till date.

Before that, he taught his elder son Ankur, who bagged AIR 570, in 2011. He has also taught his nephew Aniket, who bagged the 56th rank in India in 2013.

“After teaching my sons and seeing them succeed, I thought of preparing other students for IIT. I am not teaching any student for now, but I will definitely train another batch for the JEE soon,” Khandelwal said.

Nearly 2 lakh candidates appeared in the JEE (Advanced) - the second of the two-phase exam held in May for over 11,000 seats available in the IITs.