Ananya’s older siblings are prodigies too.
When Ananya Verma, the four-year-old wonder kid from Lucknow was enrolled in class 9, it was speculated that she would break the record of her sister who passed the 10th-grade exam when she was 7. But, the Uttar Pradesh State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (UPSCPCR) has decided not to allow the enrollment of the child prodigy in class 9.
According to a report in The Hindustan Times, the commission declared on Tuesday that the child was not eligible to join 9th standard, after interacting with her in Lucknow.
“She is no doubt a wonder girl. She can read Hindi and English text very well. But she cannot comprehend or explain what she read. Ananya recites without understanding. She can identify numbers but does not know anything about symbols of multiplication, division, addition or subtraction,” Juhie Singh, UPSCPCR chairperson said after meeting Verma.
“We found books on physics and chemistry in her bag but she was unable to tell something about the subject. She can join Class 2 or 3 but for that, the child needs special training. If she goes to Class 9, she will be under immense mental pressure,” she added.
The commission has decided to issue a notice to district inspector of schools (DIoS) Umesh Tripathi who gave permission to Ananya Verma for admission to class 9. But, her parents said that they didn’t approach the officer for securing the admission.
The parents have withdrawn the child from the school where she got an admission.
“Ananya will study whatever the experts and child rights commission suggests. We will not put any undue pressure on this talented girl,” Ananya’s father Tej Bahadur, a sanitation supervisor at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), told Hindustan Times.
The Limca Book of Records included Ananya’s sister Sushma Verma in 20017 as the “youngest student” to clear class X when she was just seven years old.
Sushma got admission for a Ph.D. program at BBAU when she was just 15. And, her brother Shailendra graduated in computer science from Lucknow University in 2007 at the age of 14 with 74.93% marks and is now a software engineer in Bengaluru.
A teacher from St. Meera’s Inter College discovered the talent of Ananya when she met her at a local market along with her father. When the teacher and her father started talking, Ananya opened up one of her books and started reading fluently.
According to her mother Chhaya, Ananya is a quick-learner who reads the Ramayana and remembers it by heart.