Hyderabad, May 12: City girl bagged the second rank in the Civil Service examination, the results of which were declared on Wednesday. Shwetha Mohanty, who at 27 is also a mother, cracked the examination in her third attempt. Sounding jubilant after the results were declared, she said she hoped to follow her IAS father PK Mohanty’s footsteps and become an honest officer.
Sweta Mohanty, a product of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan school, Jubilee Hills, and a B Tech grad from a private engineering college in the city, had first cleared the Civils in 2007 and made it to the Indian Customs and Central Excise Service. Currently posted in Siliguri as assistant commissioner, central excise, Mohanty continued with her IAS coaching hoping to secure a better rank. While marriage, the birth of a child, a full-time job and three-year break before taking the exam again may have worked against any other candidate, for Mohanty all these events in her life just added up to a success story.
Speaking from Siliguri, she said it was not only her hard work but the changed UPSC pattern that helped her crack the test. Mohanty, who opted for Public Administration and Anthropology as her main subjects, said the current paper pattern concentrates on understanding the subject rather than on memory power. “You need to understand and reason to crack the examination. You cannot just clear it by rote learning,” she said.
A mother of a one-and-a-half-year-old baby girl, Mohanty got married in 2008 to Rajat Saini, an IAS officer who is currently posted as additional district magistrate (ADM) in Siliguri. While she maintained that she never lost interest in her Civils dream even after she got a posting in revenue service, she said that her daughter’s arrival did change her study hours. “If my husband and my mother were not supportive enough I could not have got such a good rank. They helped a lot in taking care of the baby even as I did my routine studies,” said Mohanty. She said her father was the source of inspiration for her to study. “He was always a good IAS officer and from him I learned my ethics and duties for the country,” she said.
Sweta, who took IAS coaching from city-based Brain Tree, said that in order to bag top rank in the Civil Services one should be ready to put in endless effort. “One cannot stick to a specific study schedule. The exam should be on your mind 24X7. From the time of reading the morning newspapers to watching late night TV one should keep in mind the exam,” she explained.
Mohanty finds Civil Services a “dignified profession” and said that she would never deviate from morals and ethics.
Sweta Mohanty whose family roots are in Orissa was born and brought up in Hyderabad since her father PK Mohanty, an AP cadre IAS officer, was posted in the city. The Mohanty family has its permanent residence in Prashasan Nagar, Jubilee Hills. Her mother, Debasmita Mohanty is the principal of a school, Gnana Prabha in the city. However, P K Mohanty is currently in New Delhi, on deputation to the ministry of housing as additional secretary.
–Agencies