Hassan whiz kids top rural IT quiz

Monday, 30 October 2006, 20:30 IST
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Bangalore: Whiz kids B.S. Karthik and Arjun Kumar of St. Joseph Pre-university College, Hassan, were declared winners in the Karnataka rural IT quiz contest held here Sunday as part of the premier technology event Bangalore IT.in 2006. The duo, who scored 95 points in the six rounds of the quiz, was awarded a scholarship of 80,000 for bagging the first prize by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's IT bellwether, which sponsored the contest. Tenth standard students Karthik Hebar and Pavan Kumar Holla of Little Rock Indian School, Udupi, were declared first runners-up for scoring 60 points. They were given a scholarship of 50,000. Kuldeep Singh and Rahul G. Vaidya of class 10 from Forbes Academy at Gokak in Belgaum district were declared second runners-up with 30 points. They were given a scholarship of 35,000. Of the six teams qualifying for the final round, three other teams, represented by Divya Jain and Rashmi R. Dhaded of VB Darbar Composite College in Bijapur, G. Kirthi and B. Shivkumar of Sarvodaya PU College in Tumkur and S.K. Mohan and K. Karthik of Pragathi Composite School at Sagar in Shimoga district, scored 10 points each and were given consolation prizes. Besides the scholarships, the six winners of the top three teams were presented Panasonic cordless phones and a "Sand to Silicon" book, written by Shivanand Kanavi, vice-president of TCS. The questions in the six rounds of the quiz, conducted by noted quizmaster Giri Balasubramaniam, were in the areas of Workstation, Cryptic IT, Download IT, Domain Expertise, Beyond the Obvious and Instant Processing. The quiz, which entered the Limca Book of Records as the first IT quiz for rural students in India, was conducted in association with the Karnataka IT department in the 27 districts of the state. For the first time, a record number of 955,477 students participated at the district level, 17,516 students at the zonal level and 2,700 at the regional level. Last year, there were only 65,000 participants. Sri Lanka Minister for Science and Technology Tissa Vitarana and Karnataka Minister for Science and Technology Ramachandra Gowda presented the scholarships and prizes to the winners.
Source: IANS