Bhubaneswar, Jan 9, 2020: Medical negligence in 2003 cost Tapaswini Das her eyesight, but that could not prevent the 23-year-old girl from cracking the Odisha civil services exam.

Das, who lost her eyesight in the second grade in Bhubaneswar’s DAV School, secured 161st rank in the 2018 examination when the results were announced on January 6.

She appeared as a general candidate although the Public Service Commission has reservation for visually-impaired candidates.

This is the second time when a visually-challenged person has cracked the Odisha civil service examination. In 2017, eight visually-challenged candidates had made it to the list of successful candidates after the Orissa High Court allowed them to appear at the examination.

“I expected to sail through the examination. Strong determination and patience are required to achieve success and I was determined to crack the exam in my first attempt,” said Das, who is now studying Masters in political science from Bhubaneswar’s Utkal University.

Das was in 9th standard when she decided to become a civil servant. Although her first choice is Union Public Service Commission, she decided to write the Odisha exam after listening to advertisement for the examination.

Although she has battled the challenge of visual impairment successfully for the past 16 years, preparing for the civil service exam proved a daunting task.

“People who have clear eyesight, can read from books directly. But I had to depend on recordings of several books that I stored in my laptop. I used to books scanned and turn it into audio format. I have never shied away from challenges in life. So I told myself let’s give it a try,” said Das.

Her father Arun Kumar Das, a retired deputy manager from Odisha Cooperative Housing Corporation, said for him Tapaswini is both a son as well as a daughter.

Her mother Krushnapriya Mohanty is a schoolteacher.

“She used to top her class. I was heartbroken when a botched up surgery took both her eyesight,” the father recalled. He said he put her in a school for visually impaired from where she passed her matriculation exam with flying colors using Braille script.

She passed the higher secondary examination in the arts stream topping the list of successful students. She did extremely well in her graduation too. “All throughput her career she has been a persevering student,” said Arun Kumar Das.

With a rank of 161, Tapaswini may find it difficult to make it to Odisha Administrative Service and would have to settle for Odisha Tax and Accounts Service and Odisha Revenue Service.

But the young girl is determined to crack UPSC as she hopes to follow in the footsteps of Pranjal Patil, India’s first visually-impaired IAS officer who in October last year took charge as sub-collector of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

“In UPSC, there is reservation for visually-challenged persons and she can crack it. She is a fiercely determined girl,” said her father.

Sulochana Das, Odisha Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, said her department would felicitate Tapaswini for her achievement.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/visually-impaired-odisha-girl-cracks-state-civil-services-exam-in-first-attempt/story-kBG3Zsrb4cgtaF1bMWDgdP.html