Assam: Kokrajhar centre honours girl students for JEE, NEET success

PM SHRI Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Kokrajhar, held a felicitation ceremony to recognise students who qualified in the JEE and NEET 2025 examinations, marking another successful year for a coaching initiative aimed at girls from India's northeast.

The event honoured students from two batches of the Centre of Excellence, a residential coaching programme run as a corporate social responsibility project by Tata AIG General Insurance Company Limited in partnership with Avanti Fellows.

Malpadevi Maharana, chief operations and customer experience officer at Tata AIG, served as chief guest at the ceremony. She was joined by guests of honour including Tridip Dowari, deputy vice president and zonal sales manager for high opportunity markets in Guwahati, Devang Pandya, vice president and lead for CSR and sustainability, and Mahesh Prasad Shivhare, principal of JNV Kohima.

Maharana commended the school's efforts in nurturing talent and promoting inclusive education. "The Centre of Excellence at Kokrajhar, in the past three years, has produced successful NEET and JEE qualifiers. Our 2024 expansion to Kohima has also shown promising progress," she said.

The programme selects 40 girls annually from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools across all eight northeastern states under the Shillong Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti Regional Office. Students receive intensive residential coaching at the Kokrajhar campus, preparing them for JEE Main, JEE Advanced, NEET and other science, technology, engineering and mathematics entrance examinations.

Pandya noted that the Kokrajhar facility is India's first all-girls Centre of Excellence within the PM SHRI JNV school system. "Through free, quality coaching integrated with regular schooling, we're enabling rural and underrepresented students from scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and marginalised communities to compete confidently at the national level," he said.

Both the Kokrajhar and Kohima centres employ four specialised teachers covering physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology. The programme has received recognition including the North East CSR Forum Award 2024 in the education category.

The ceremony featured cultural performances by students, including traditional dances from Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, songs and a theatrical presentation in Assamese and English. The event concluded with the distribution of certificates and mementos to the successful students.