Big B Goes to B.Ed

In September 2018, a student in Faizabad downloaded his B.Ed admit card and found Amitabh Bachchan staring back at him from the candidate photo box.

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Amit Dwivedi was a B.Ed student at Ravindra Singh Smarak Mahavidyalaya, a college affiliated to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh. In September 2018, he downloaded his admit card for the upcoming B.Ed examination.

His name was correct. His roll number was correct. His examination centre was correct.

His photograph was Amitabh Bachchan.

Not a look-alike. Not a coincidence. The actual, unmistakable, silver-haired face of the most recognisable man in Indian cinema — staring out from the candidate portrait box of a government B.Ed admit card in rural Uttar Pradesh.

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The Cyber Cafe Theory

The university's investigation pointed, as it almost always does, to a cyber cafe upload error. Someone at some point in the image pipeline had either saved a stock image of Amitabh Bachchan with a sequential filename that collided with Amit Dwivedi's photo slot, or had been browsing an entertainment page while processing student uploads and accidentally overwrote the wrong file.

The server accepted it. The system printed it. The university dispatched it.

Amit Dwivedi's primary concern, entirely reasonably, was that the invigilator at the examination gate would take one look at the admit card — a young man holding a credential bearing a 75-year-old megastar's face — and send him home.

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What Happened at the Gate

College authorities, to their credit, handled the situation with some grace. They verified Amit Dwivedi's Aadhaar card, confirmed his enrollment, accepted a written undertaking, and allowed him into the examination hall. He sat his paper. He passed.

The university corrected the digital record before final mark-sheet generation.

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The Internet's Take

Social media was delighted. The dominant question was whether Amitabh Bachchan — having played a teacher, a lawyer, a police officer, a gangster, an angry young man, and a quiz show host — was now pivoting to primary school education. Baghban 2: Classroom Edition was suggested in several replies. Others noted that if Big B did sit the B.Ed exam, he would probably top it.

Amitabh Bachchan himself did not comment. His eligibility for a Faizabad teaching post remains, officially, unverified.

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Timeline: INC-ABS-2018-UP-007

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Sources & Further Reading

1. "Amitabh Bachchan photo on student's BEd admit card in UP's Faizabad" — NDTV, 3 September 2018. ndtv.com
2. "Amitabh Bachchan photo on B.Ed admit card" — India Today, 3 September 2018. indiatoday.in