Gopalakrishna, who trains students for civil services, noted, “Their effort has now been rewarded. It is consistency and optimism that have finally succeeded.”
Hyderabad: Women have claimed the top places in the Group-1 results announced by the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TGPSC). Six of the top 10 general merit positions went to women candidates. In the top 50, women accounted for nearly half and 41 women featured in the top 100. At the top of the list stands Hyderabad’s Lakshmi Deepika Kommireddy, a doctor who finished her MBBS from Osmania Medical College who decided against a medical career abroad and instead stayed back to write UPSC and state service exams.
Dadi Venkataramana from Nalgonda secured second place with 535.5 marks. Tejaswini Reddy was placed fourth overall and first in Multi-Zone 1. The fifth-rank went to Krithika Siddala from Meerpet.
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, the topper Lakshmi Deepika said, “I had scheduled my US residency exam. Everything was ready. But I realised leaving didn’t suit who I was,” she said.
The decision to change in track came early, while still eligible to attempt civil services without compromising on age limits. It allowed her to commit fully.
Her preparation wasn’t structured around classroom lectures or crash courses. She prepared independently and mainly anchored by her UPSC study plan, with minor additions for the state-specific syllabus. “About 80 to 85 per cent of what I’d studied for UPSC worked here,” she said.
Her academic discipline came from medicine. The patience required to sit through long hours and the rigour of retaining volume after volume of information lent themselves naturally to public service preparation.
“Competitive exams test your patience more than anything else,” she added. That endurance isn’t new to her. She has faced failure before. A few UPSC attempts didn’t yield the outcome she wanted, and in 2023 she cleared the Andhra Pradesh Group-1 exam and was allotted the MPDO post in the non-local category. She gave it up to focus on UPSC again and has appeared for two interviews already.
She used the same window of preparation to complete an MBA in Hospital Management through a distance programme. Last year, she secured a spot in Osmania University’s law programme through the Telangana Lawcet. Her academic path, while diverse, is threaded with intentionality, from schooling at DAV Public School to junior college in Narayanguda and medical school in Hyderabad. Her father, a recently retired senior audit officer in the Accountant General’s office, and her mother, a homemaker, have been the major support system in her long arc of preparation.
“I always just wanted to leave a mark, whether in medicine or administration.” She speaks plainly, neither overly confident nor deferential.
Independence, she says, is her central belief. And for young women she has just one piece of advice: “ It is very important for women to be independent. So make sure that happens and pick a career that excites you, not one pushed by someone else.”
Gopalakrishna, who trains students for civil services, noted, “Their effort has now been rewarded. It is consistency and optimism that have finally succeeded.” According to him, women are performing especially well in descriptive exams like the mains.
