Free coaching for students

Meritorious students of Class X, preparing for engineering entrance exams, can look forward to free expert guidance under the BCCL Ke Laal-/BCCL ki Ladli Schemes from June.

Kalyan Bhavan, one of the proposed videoconferencing centres, at Jagjivan Nagar in Dhanbad. (Gautam Dey)

Meritorious students of Class X, preparing for engineering entrance exams, can look forward to free expert guidance under the BCCL Ke Laal-/BCCL ki Ladli Schemes from June.

The coaching classes will be conducted daily between 4pm and 9pm through videoconferencing at Kalyan Bhavan in Jagivan Nagar in Dhanbad and its three area offices at Lodna, Katras and Block II.

Renowned experts, including Jitendra Kumar of IIT Kharagpur for physics, Akhi-lesh Kumar of IIT BHU for mathematics and Naman Srivastava of IIT BHU for chemistry, will guide the engineering aspirants.

BCCL deputy general of corporate communication, R.R. Prasad, said, "Students will be selected through a test. Only those students whose annual gross family income is below Rs 6 lakh can apply. We have started to collect applications from last month and have collected around 500 forms."

He said the screening test was likely to be conducted by the end of May at different centres, including DAV Public School, Koylanagar; DAV Public School, Barora; De Nobili School, Sijua; DAV Centenary Public School, Baniahir and Loyola School, Taldanga.

"Four batches of 50 students each will be provided training at four centres thro-ugh videoconferencing. They will also get study material and stationeries for free," Prasad said. The students will be trained for the next two years.

The BCCL scheme launched on the instruction of chairman and MD Gopal Sin-gh (also the CMD of CCL) is an extension of a similar initiative undertaken by CCL in Ranchi, Ramgarh and Bokaro.

Under the CCL schme, students are trained at five centres. In Ranchi, coaching is provided to 22 students in two centres. Coaching through video conferencing is conducted for 150 students at CCL centres at Barka (Sayal area) under Ramgarh district; Dhori area under Bokaro district and NK area under Ranchi district since 2012-13.

Three batches of students have successfully completed the coaching and 10 among those were selected for top engineering colleges such as IIT, NIT and BIT Mesra in the last 10 years.