Sri Chaitanya, a chain of junior colleges headquartered in Andhra Pradesh, is in a soup for allegedly claiming Sandeep Pathry of New Delhi, first ranker in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE), as its student. 

The image of Pathry in red blazer with his thumbs up has been prominently placed in all the advertisements of the college. The college claims that  it coached Pathry.

However, the Boys Senior Secondary School in Mukherjee Nagar of New Delhi where Pathry studied and has got 346 marks out of 360 in the B Tech stream and government teachers associations in AP are not amused. “On the day when  AIEEE results were announced the college made no mention of its ties with the student, the management held news conferences only after a day on Sunday and announced that it coached Pathry,” P Madhusudan Reddy, general secretary of the Government Junior College Lecturers’ Association said.

The first ranker addressing media in New Delhi also never made any mention of his connection with the corporate college based out of Hyderabad. It was only on Sunday, the college announced that Pathry had taken coaching at their centre in Delhi. The alleged purchase of rankers for browbeating opponent colleges drew flak from government college association across Andhra Pradesh which was campaigning against such culture. The secondary education department, which governs junior colleges in the state, has announced that an enquiry will be held in the matter.

Madhusudan Reddy demanded a national-level enquiry into the allegations of “rank purchase” particularly in the Pathry case. “Its a multi crore business. In this case, it is clear that there has been some sort of underhand dealing which has to be probed,” Reddy said. 

He alleged that this is not the first time that private colleges in the state have resorted to such practices. “Last year as well, one of the top rankers in IIT-JEE was ‘claimed’ by a corporate college. The student was originally from a small college but a junior college chain claimed that he attended their coaching classes,” alleged Reddy.