LUCKNOW: Varanasi’s Shalini Patel topped the joint entrance exam for admissions to Bachelor of Education (BEd-JEE). An arts postgraduate, Shalini scored 370 marks out of 400 (92.5%). She also stood as the topper in the girl’s category. The second position was bagged by Rahul Kumar, a native of Kanpur. Rahul, an agriculture student scored 90% (360 marks). At number three was Mateshwari Prasad, an arts student from Prayagraj. He scored 88.75% (355 marks).Talking to TOI, 23-year-old Shalini said that she has done her post-graduation in Hindi from Banaras Hindu University. She aspires to become a teacher but her final aim is to crack the civil services examination, but due to financial constraints she has to find a job to sustain herself and that is why she chose to do BEd first.Results show that Prayagraj district had a maximum of three (ranks 3, 8 and 9) candidates in top 10. No student from Lucknow made it to the top 10 slots. Of the 10, six were male while four were female candidates. Category-wise, OBC candidates bagged eight of the 10 top positions. The counselling for admissions is proposed from July 10.UPBEd-JEE was the first competitive exam in UP that was held under CCTV vigil with real-time monitoring and face recognition attendance of candidates. To ensure sanctity of examinations, the university had set up an Integrated Command Control Centre (ICCC) consisting of 23,500 CCTV cameras for real-time monitoring of examination centres. A total of 4.7 lakh had registered for the exam that was held in two shifts at 1,108 centres in 75 districts of UP. There are 2.53 lakh seats in 2,510 colleges offering the BEd course in the state. Of this, 7,800 seats are in 117 government and aided colleges. There are 2.45 lakh seats in 2,393 self-finance colleges. Registrar of Bundelkhand University, Vinay Singh said, “The first round of counselling is expected from July 10. We have requested all universities to declare their final year UG results by the first week of July.”
