The family of 24-year-old Divya Pandey, who initially claimed to have cleared the civil services examination in her first attempt, issued an apology on Friday to the district administration, Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL), and the media for disseminating inaccurate information. They clarified that the individual who secured the 323rd rank in the UPSC examination is another person, Divya P from South India, not Divya Pandey.
Divya Pandey’s elder sister, Priyadarshni Pandey, explained that they received information from a friend in Uttar Pradesh about Divya’s purported success, but due to internet issues, they were unable to verify the details on the UPSC website. The family, unintentionally misled by this misinformation, had earlier claimed Divya’s success, leading to felicitations from CCL officials and media coverage.
The Deputy Commissioner of Ramgarh, Madhavi Mishra, who had also acknowledged Divya Pandey’s achievement, referred to the situation as a “human error.” The officials in Ramgarh mentioned that no action had been taken against the girl or her family in connection with the incident.
The family, emphasizing that there was no intention to spread false news, expressed regret for the error. They revealed that, upon discovering the truth, Divya Pandey has left for Delhi. Chandreshwar Singh, an area secretary of Coalfields Majdoor Union and Divya’s neighbor, explained that due to internet issues, the family couldn’t verify the information received from a friend in Uttar Pradesh, leading to the inadvertent dissemination of the inaccurate success story.
Divya, a resident of Rajrappa colony in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district, graduated from Ranchi University in 2017. In her earlier claim, she stated, “I put in around 18 hours of study on a daily basis and read a lot of National Council of Education Research (NCERT) books.” Her father, Jagdish Prasad Pandey, a retired crane operator from CCL, had expressed pride in his daughter’s hard work and success, which, as per the corrected information, belongs to another individual named Divya P.
