Meet 64-year old retired Odisha banker who cracked NEET, now a first-year MBBS student. Odisha’s Jay Kishore Pradhan cracked the NEET earlier this year and enrolled as a first-year MBBS student like thousands of other aspirants from the state – just that he is all of 64 and a retired banker.
Pradhan, whose ageless exploit is being described as a rare event in India’s medical education history, says he wants to serve people as long as he is alive.
By the time he completes his MBBS degree, Pradhan will hit the age of 70. Although he has no commercial intentions going ahead.
“I want to serve the people till I am alive,” Pradhan said, adding that age was just a number for him.
Although the upper age limit for appearing in the NEET exam is 25, the former banker had filed a writ petition to be eligible to sit in the exam in the Supreme Court in 2018, the verdict of which, was delivered in his favor.
A former official of SBI took admission at the state-run Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology in the disability reservation category on Wednesday.
“It is one of the rare events in the history of medical education in the country. Pradhan has set an example by getting admission as a medical student at such an age,” VIMSAR Director Lalit Meher said.
Pradhan appeared for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which does not have an upper age limit, in September, secured a good rank, and qualified for VIMSAR.
“In 1974, after meeting with failure to make it into MBBS courses on the first attempt, I joined BSc courses in Physics (Honours). Following graduation, I worked in the telecom sector for four years. Then, I worked in the Indian Bank for a year, before finally joining the State bank Of India in 1983,” Pradhan, the 64-year-young said.
Pradhan, who is likely to be 70 by the time his MBBS course is complete, said that age, too, is just a number for him.