Pleasant surprise for engineering topper

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) results came as a surprise for Hrudaya Ranjan Sahoo of the Capital city who topped the engineering stream. The results were declared on Wednesday.“I had put up a good performance but never imagined being a topper. It came as a pleasant surprise for me and my family,” said Hrudaya. He has already secured 4,070 rank in IIT-JEE and is currently awaiting the AIEEE results. He is yet to decide on a college for admission.Kendrapara boy Prasanjit Pattnayak topped the medical stream. The going was not easy for this hardworking student, who acknowledges that cracking medical is always difficult. “I dropped two years for preparing for the entrance and now it has paid off,” said Prasanjit. He eyed SCB Medical College but would not mind joining the upcoming AIIMS College if the work on the college is complete by then. Prasanjit has also topped in  pharmacy.Rasananda Sahoo topped in MCA and Rani Mittal in MBA streams. There was a substantial increase of 18.2 pc in the number of students applying for OJEE this year, compared to 2011. This year 96,617 students had appeared for OJEEE. A major development noticed in OJEE this year was the participation of NRI candidates. While last year there were no candidates appearing under that quota, this 47 of them appeared for the examination. According to OJEE officials, the counselling will start by third week of June. The nodal centres will be set up five days prior to the counselling. Around 20 nodal centres will be set up across the State at the same places as last time and there will be no major changes in the format of counselling, said OJEE officials. The rank cards will be dispatched between June 10 and June 15.The number of girls also increased this year with 25,934 appearing for the entrance. For medical stream 31,404 candidates wrote the exam but only 2,852 could qualify. Pharmacy aspirants performed better with 16,859 out of 17,305 qualifying. This year more entrance examination centres were set up than last year.