Hailing from frontier district of Poonch three close friends on Thursday made it to the prestigious Indian Administrative Services from Jammu region. At least nine candidates from Jammu made it to the final list while a serving IRS officer from Srinagar Abid Hussain Sadiq made it to the top at 27th rank. A total of 11 candidates had made it to the IAS list in 2013 and this year it is 10.
Two of the three candidates Mehtab Ahmed and Qummer Ul Zaman Choudhary are alumni of NIT, Srinagar (civil engineering) while the third candidate Owais Ahmad completed his graduation from Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences before cracking Kashmir Adminis-trative Services exam.
The trio completed their higher secondary level studies in Poonch and later shifted to Jammu for higher studies due to prevailing security situation in the border area.
Speaking to The Pioneer Mentab Ahmed and Qummer-ul Zaman Choudhary said, coming from frontier district of Poonch they had to struggle hard to compete at the national level. There was no CBSE school in Poonch and we had to work hard to face the competition.
They gave full credit to their families and close friends for standing behind them and motivating them to cross the milestone.
“When we were studying in school in Mendhar and Surankote the area witnessed lot of tension along the line of Control”. Army was present even in schools due to tense situation during the Kargil war. Our parents took the wise decision of shifting us to Jammu for completing our higher secondary part II studies. If Kargil had not happened we would have stayed back and studied there, said Qummer Choudhary.
After graduating from the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar all three cracked their KAS exam and while remaining in service they appeared for their IAS exam and Thursday made it to the list. Dr Owais Ahmad credited his success in the IAS exam to his uncle Dr Masood Choudhary, retired IPS officer and former Vice Chancellor of Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University.
Abhiskeh Mahajan, Vikran Bhushan and Afaq Ahmad Giri also made it to the list from Jammu region. Bashir Ahmad Bhat (189) Raja Yaqoob Farooq (274) and Shakeel Maqbool (633) also made it to the UPSC’s list from Kashmir region.