Media, Web Portals, and Social Media Misreport that the top 4 UPSC rank-holders are women…

The Union Public Services Commission announced the results of Civil Services (Main) examination 2021 last Monday. Shruti Sharma topped the list of rank holders with 54.56 per cent marks. Followed by Ankita Agarwal and Gamini Singla who secured the second and third positions respectively. Meanwhile media organizations, web portals and social media posts claimed that the top four rank holders in Civil Services Examination were female. 

You can see a post on Facebook claiming that the top four rank holders in CSE are females below.

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However, we found out that this is not true. Fourth rank holder, Aishwarya Verma in the UPSC CSE 2021 merit list is a male. 

Fact Check

We went through the interviews and media reports about the 2021 UPSC toppers. We found that the top three in the list are indeed female. The results of the UPSC CSE 2021 exams are available on the website of UPSC.

The topper Shruti Sharma hails from New Delhi. She secured 1105 marks out of 2025 marks (Mains+Interview). You can watch her interview below where she shares her experience and details of her preparations:

The second topper Ankita Agarwal secured 1050 marks out of 2025 marks (Mains+Interview). You can watch her interview below where she shares her experience with ANI.

The third topper Gamini Singla scored 1045 marks and you can watch her talk about her experiences and motivations in the video given below:

However, the fourth topper Aishwarya Varma is a male. Aishwarya who is from Ujjain scored 1039 marks out of 2025.

News link- TOI 

You can listen to Aishwarya describing his journey in the video given below:

Total 685 candidates have cleared the civil services examination this year. Out of which, 508 candidates are men and 177 are women. This is first time in 7 years that the first three toppers of UPSC CSE are women. Last time women bagged the top three ranks was in UPSC CSE 2014, when Ira Singhal, Renu Raj and Nidhi Gupta bagged the first, second and third positions respectively. In 2014, women bagged the top four positions in the UPSC CSE merit list.

UPSC CSE 2014 Results

Conclusion

It is clear from the above investigation that the top three rank holders in the recently announced UPSC CSE 2021 results are female. However, the fourth rank holder Aishwarya Varma is male. Hence, the claim made by media organizations, web portals and social media handles that the women bagged the top four positions in UPSC CSE 2021 is partly false.