Bihar is once again in the eye of storm for its education system. Last year it was Arts topper Ruby Rai who became a laughing stock after she told reporters that “political science” is about cooking. This time it’s Ganesh Kumar, who topped Class 12 board exam in Humanities stream. Kumar stood exposed during a TV interview where he failed to answer basic questions from the subjects he had taken. Kumar who appeared for the board exams at Ramnandan Singh Jagdip Narayan High school in Samastipur secured a total of 82.6 % marks while he got 92 per cent in Hindi, 82 per cent in music and 42 per cent in social science. Kumar’s result, like his predecessor, has also been cancelled
Following are the reasons that led to his expose and arrest.
1) Kumar has been arrested for forging his date of birth. He claimed to be 24 while he is actually 42-year-old and the father of two children. BSEB chairperson Anand Kishor said: “We went through the board’s old records and found that Ganesh Kumar had appeared in the matriculation examination in 1990 from Giridih and in 1992 from Jhumri Tilaiya and secured a second division both times. He had mentioned his date of birth in the admit card as November 7, 1975.” Kishor said Ganesh, who hails from Giridih in Jharkhand, took the Class X examination again in 2015 and secured a first division but mentioned his date of birth as June 2, 1993.
2) Kumar failed to answer basic questions posed by the media on music, in which he scored 65 out of 70 in practicals.
3) Kumar had said that singer Lata Mangeshkar is known as ‘Maithili Kokila’, a title bestowed on folk singer Sharda Sinha.
4) He failed to explain what is ‘sur’, ‘taal’ and ‘matra’, considered the basics of music.
5) When he was asked how he’d excelled in the Music practicals, Ganesh unrhythmically sang a few lines of a Bollywood number.
Around 64.75 per cent students failed the examinations this year — the worst BSEB result in two decades.
