Rajasthan, India (BBN)-Students of Class 10 taking their secondary exam at Government Senior Secondary School, Roopwas, were amused to find among themselves a 59-year-old man writing answers on day 1 of the RBSE exams in Rajasthan.
Bharatpur’s mayor Shiv Singh, who dropped out of school in 1971 after passing class 8, was back to school to resume studies, reports the Hindustan Times.
“I want to become at least Class 12 pass now,” he said when asked what was his plan now that he had got back to studies after a gap of almost four decades.
The class 10 exams of Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education began on Thursday with the English paper.
Singh said he had done well and was now preparing for the next paper, scheduled on March 12.
Shiv Singh remembered walking seven kilometres from his village Bhot to Sevar for upper primary education.
“The school in our village was only up to Class 5. The Sevar school was till Class 8. Although it was later upgraded to secondary level when I still in it, I never felt the need to study beyond Class 8,” he said.
Shiv Singh is a businessman in Bharatpur, who turned a politician when he contested municipal election in 2004 and got elected as the chairman of municipal council.
In 2014, when Bharatpur municipality was upgraded to a municipal corporation, he got elected as Bharatpur’s first mayor.
Shiv Singh said he got motivated to study again following the government’s order of introducing educational qualification as an eligibility criteria in the panchayat elections.
“The chief minister is laying so much premium on education. It becomes our duty to get at least Class 12 qualification,” he said.
BBN/SK/AD