Pranjal Patil Is India’s First Visually Challenged Woman IAS Officer

Visual impairment is something that affects a large portion of our population and more often than not, people who suffer from it are left behind because of the lack of accessibility for them. However, every now and then there comes someone who works harder than anyone around them and achieve their dreams with a challenge that many consider a constraint.

One of the newest addition to the lot is Pranjal Patil from Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra who lost her eyesight at the age of 6. She underwent multiple surgeries to reattach her retinas but none of them worked out, but what did work out was her hard work to move ahead of this challenge and achieve her dreams.

Pranjal decided to move ahead in life and devote her time to academics, something she was also very good at. But the start was not so great, in her early years, she faced some difficulties at the Marathi-medium Kamala Mehta Dadar School for the blind. She decided to get into St. Xavier and she managed to secure a seat in there with the help of Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged. She did her graduation in Political Science through Xavier and later pursued Masters in International Relations from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

With her exceptional work in the masters, she was offered an integrated MPhil and Ph.D. program. And, then she cleared Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination merely by solving mock papers and attending discussions rather than joining a coaching center. UPSC exams are considered to be one of the toughest exams in the world on which people spend years in order to prepare and crack it.

She first gave the exam in 2016 and secured 773 ranks at the exam after which she was offered a job in the Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), however, the railways refused to appoint her owing to her 100% blindness. “After the railways’ refusal, I was disappointed, but not ready to give up the fight. I again worked hard to improve my ranking in the second attempt,” Patil said.

Now in her second attempt for the exam, she cracked it again with an even better score. She stood 124th in the country and joined as assistant collector at Ernakulam district in Kerala a week ago. “I did notice right away that because Kochi is tourist friendly, everyone is very accustomed to receiving new people in the city,” she told media a little after joining duty.

People like Pranjal Patil are an inspiration for everyone who has a dream and wishes to achieve it.

Jyotsna Amla