Bihar topper Ganesh Kumar
A year after the Bihar toppers’ scam, the state education board has again come into controversy with the state topper in Arts Ganesh Kumar failing to answer basic questions of his subject. Apart from the fact that he lied about his date of birth, he found it difficult in explaining the basics of music ‘sur’, ‘taal’ and ‘matra’, in an interview with a TV channel. When a TV channel reporter asked about his marks, Kumar’s answer was that he couldn’t remember.
Regarding his music practical, he said that he sang a few lines of a popular Bollywood song. Kumar also mentioned Lata Mangeshkar as ‘Maithili Kokila’, the title bestowed to folk singer Sharda Sinha.
BSEB chairperson Anand Kishor said on Friday, “We went through the board’s old records and found that Ganesh Kumar had appeared in the matriculation examination in 1990 from Giridih and in 1992 from Jhumri Tilaiya and secured a second division both times. He had mentioned his date of birth in the admit card as November 7, 1975.”
Kumar, a resident of Giridih came all his way to take admission in Samastipur school, and cleared the exam with 82.6 per cent. He scored 92 per cent in Hindi, 82 per cent in music and 42 per cent in social science. BSEB spokesperson Rajiv Ranjan Dwivedi said, “We traced records of the board of undivided Bihar and matched his father’s name and permanent address.”
Read | Bihar Board Class 12 arts stream 2017 topper Ganesh Kumar detained, result cancelled. Click here
The state results were declared on Tuesday in which 64.75 per cent students failed this year making it the worst performance in two decades. In science, 30.11 per cent students cleared the exams, 37.11 per cent passed in arts stream and 73.76 per cent cleared in the commerce stream.