Assam doctor ranks 5th, tops among men in UPSC exam

GUWAHATI: Riding on self-study, Assam doctor Mayur Hazarika topped this year's UPSC among male candidates and bagged the 5th rank in his first attempt. All the top four positions have been bagged by women candidates.
Apart from Hazarika, whose performance is the best-ever by anyone from the state, 17 others made the cut this year from the northeast - five from Assam, three from Arunachal Pradesh, four each from Nagaland and Manipur, and one from Meghalaya.
Hazarika was engaged as a rural practitioner at a government hospital at Kaliabor in central Assam's Nagaon district for a year till mid-2022, following which he devoted himself to preparing for the UPSC exam. He was among the state toppers in both Class X (10th rank) and Class XII (9th rank) board examinations before he joined Gauhati Medical College and Hospital from where he completed his MBBS.
"Even before joining the medical college, I was interested in joining civil services. But there was no such proper guidance about cracking civil services in 2015 (when he passed Class XII). But in the third and fourth year, again I got enthusiastic about civil services," said Hazarika.
"I did self-study for civil services despite joining online classes," Hazarika added.
His father Krishna Hazarika said, "Without doing post-graduation, he was doing focused study for the competitive exam. We never dreamt of such a top-level position in the rankings. It's a rare feat for Assam."
(With inputs from Manosh Das)