These chosen 100 students in Kanpur have cleared JEE Mains, thanks to this PSU

Kanpur: In a resounding success for GAIL (India) Limited's flagship Corporate Social Responsibility initiative 'GAIL Utkarsh,' all 100 students from underprivileged sections of society enrolled at its Kanpur centre qualified the JEE Mains 2019 examination. Apart from them, 50 of the 60 students from its newly-established centres in Uttarakhand also cleared the prestigious entrance test, GAIL Director (Human Resources) PK Gupta said on Wednesday.

Success rate of 100%

While the Kanpur chapter has been consistently successful in transforming the lives of talented students, this is the first time that it has achieved a success rate of 100 percent, wherein all the 100 students, which included 14 girls, qualified the JEE Mains this year. Last year, 99 out of 100 students had passed the examination, Gupta said at a felicitation ceremony. The event was attended by GAIL Executive Director (HR & CSR) Prasoon Kumar, GAIL Chief General Manager (CSR) Anoop Gupta and Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership (CSRL) Director SK Shahi.

Under GAIL Utkarsh, students got free 1-year-long residential coaching

The students, who are from the 10th batch of 'GAIL Utkarsh', were provided one year of free residential coaching under this CSR project which is conducted in partnership with CSRL. GAIL was the first among PSUs to start the coaching centre at Kanpur for talented but underprivileged students in 2009-10.

GAIL has also started similar programmes recently in Dwarahat and Srinagar in Uttarakhand. This year, 26 out of 30 students from Srinagar and 24 out of 30 from Dwarahat qualified JEE Mains. In view of the success at these centres, the strength has been increased to 50 each in the current season, Gupta said.

The beginning

'GAIL Utkarsh' started with just 23 students in 2009, and has so far transformed the lives of 683 students, who have secured admissions in IITs/NITs and other reputed engineering colleges. The success rate of the project is 89 percent.

What is the criteria for selection of students?

Students are selected on the basis of written test, interview and strict economic criteria, ie, the annual income of parents should not exceed Rs 2.50 lakhs per annum. Most of them come from rural background. Students securing seats in Engineering Colleges, are provided scholarships, through GAIL Charitable & Educational Trust (GC&ET). Each selected student receives Rs 48,000 to 60,000 per annum to meet their academic fees and other expenses.

The students of first five batches have joined various reputed companies and started their professional careers with an average salary of Rs 6.00 lakh per annum.