GAIL’s CSR initiative transforming lives of hundreds of students

100 % students from ‘GAIL Utkarsh’ Kanpur centre clear JEE Mains, 50 out of 60 from Uttarakhand centres make the cut 

by Priya Jadhav

Kanpur, May, 2019: In a resounding success of GAIL (India) Limited’s flagship Corporate Social Responsibility initiative ‘GAIL Utkarsh’, all 100 students from underprivileged sections of society enrolled at its Kanpur centre qualified the JEE Mains 2019 examination. Apart from them, 50 of the 60 students from its newly-established centres in Uttarakhand also cleared the prestigious entrance test, GAIL Director (Human Resources) Shri P K Gupta announced here today.

While the Kanpur chapter has been consistently successful in transforming the lives of talented students, this is the first time that it has achieved a success rate of 100 %, wherein all the 100 students including 14 girls, qualified the JEE Mains this year. Last year, 99 of the 100 students had passed the examination, Shri P K Gupta said at a felicitation ceremony in which also present were GAIL Executive Director (HR & CSR) Shri Prasoon Kumar, GAIL Chief General Manager (CSR) Shri Anoop Gupta and Center for Social Responsibility and Leadership (CSRL) Director Shri S K Shahi.

The students, who are from the tenth batch of ‘GAIL Utkarsh’, were provided one year of free residential coaching under this CSR project which is conducted in partnership with CSRL. GAIL was the first among PSUs to start the coaching centre at Kanpur for talented but underprivileged students in 2009-10. GAIL also started similar programmes recently in Dwarahat and Srinagar in Uttarakhand. This year, 26 out of 30 students from Srinagar and 24 out of 30 from Dwarahat qualified JEE Mains. In view of the success at these centres, the strength has been increased to 50 each in the current season, Shri P K Gupta said.‘GAIL Utkarsh’, which started with just 23 students in 2009, has, so far, transformed the lives of 683 students, who have secured admissions in IITs/NITs and other reputed engineering colleges. The success rate of the project is 89%.

The students are selected on the basis of written test, interview and strict economic criteria, i.e., the annual income of parents should not exceed Rs 2.50 lakhs per annum. Most of them come from rural background. Students securing seats in Engineering Colleges, are provided scholarships, through GAIL Charitable & Educational Trust (GC&ET). Each selected student receives Rs. 48,000 to 60,000 per annum to meet their academics fees and other expenses. The students of first five batches have joined various reputed companies and started their professional career with average salary of Rs. 6.00 lakhs per annum.