Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat with students of Super-40. (ANI) Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat with students of Super-40. (ANI)

Nine students from the Indian Army’s Kashmir Super-40, a coaching initiative for the youth of Jammu and Kashmir, have cleared the JEE Advanced entrance exam for admission to the IITs. According to an Army spokesperson, there were thirty six students in the batch out of which nine cleared the exam. The successful candidates also interacted with Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat in New Delhi on Tuesday.

The nine qualifiers from the Kashmir Super-40 initiative are Aqib Amin, Mohammad Mussa, Bashir Ahmed, Nasir Ali, Imtiyaz Hussain, Feroz Ahmed, Maisam Ali, Shahid Sultan and Jahangir Shakeel.

“The success achieved this year was overwhelming with 9 out of a 36-student batch having qualified,” the Army spokesman said.

The ‘Kashmir Super-40’ is being conducted by the Army at Srinagar in coordination with Centre for Social Responsibility and Learning (CSRL), and Petronet LNG Ltd (PLL) since 2013. It provides a platform for underprivileged children from the state. “Free lodging and boarding along with coaching is provided to the selected 40 students of J&K for 11 months,” the spokesman said.

Twenty six boys and two girls out of the batch had earlier cleared the JEE Mains examination. Five girls were part of the Super-40 this year who for the first time – two of which are eligible for admission to Jamia Milia Islamia for engineering.

Meenakshi Shai, chief manager of the Army’s Super-40 batch project (CSRL), told Times of India, “This Super-40 batch has been in existence for the last three years. In the first year, not one student from the batch could crack JEE. Last year, 30 students from the batch took the JEE Mains. Out of them, 25 students cleared the JEE Mains and seven cleared the JEE Advanced. This year, the number of students who cleared the JEE Advanced has increased to nine. We hope the number will keep increasing by the year.”

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