New Delhi, November 29
The first online Common Admission Test (CAT) for entry to seven prestigious IIMs and about 100 other business schools failed to take off smoothly today, with about 200 students across 11 centres reported to have been unable to take the exam due to technical snags at centres.

To be conducted online over the next nine days till December 7, the examination this year has 2, 41, 582 registered aspirants, against a strength of 2.61 lakh last year. The decline of about 12 per cent in the aspirant strength to CAT is being attributed to the format of the examination changing from pen-and-paper optical reading marker style to the hi-tech computer-based system, which the semi-urban and rural students are not very comfortable with.

As the examination took off at 10 am today in 32 cities and 105 centres across India, reports came in of servers crashing in about 11 centres of nine cities. About 200 students could not reportedly take the exams due to problems reported from centres in SRM University, Chennai; Venkateswara College and Garden City College, Bangalore; DEIT, Bhopal; Heritage Institute of Technology and EIILM at Kolkata; Saraswathy College of Engineering, Mumbai and College of Engineering, Pune.

Close to Chandigarh in Kharar, Rayat and Bahra Biotechnology Centre of Excellence reported problems in the online exam, with 60 students unable to take the same. One CAT centre in Lucknow was also affected, leaving the students anxious.

Much of the tension was however eased with the Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal stepping in to soothe the panic. He said those who could not take the test on day one could sit for it over the next nine days, when the staggered exam would be held.

CAT conveners also said every student would be accommodated and, if possible, a revised schedule of examination dates e-mailed to the affected ones. The conveners declined reports of the online test failing at certain centres due to crashing of the servers. They attributed the problem to long downloading time and to “technical issues like software incompatibility.”

And though there were reports that the online exam had been cancelled in certain centres like Kharar in Punjab, Soumitra Roy, Managing Director, Prometric, India, the agency conducting the online CAT test, said, “No exam has been cancelled in any test centre. Yes, we have to reschedule some exams due to isolated technical issues. The exam otherwise went off well, with thousands of tests successfully delivered in hundreds of test centres throughout the country.”

The report of troubles initially started to pour in from centres in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bhopal, where the tests would now have to be rescheduled though the IIMs are yet to officially react on the problem and why it occurred.

As of now, what one knows is: There will be two rounds of CAT online test each day till December 7, the first round from 10 am to 12.30 pm and the second from 3.30 pm to 6 pm. Maps detailing locations of test centres are available on CAT website.

CAT admits students to 2000 seats in management schools across India, including IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Lucknow, Kozhikode and Shillong and Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, Institute of Management Training, Ghaziabad, Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad and Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai.

PTI/IANS: Satish Deodhar, convenor of the CAT committee of the IIMs, said the main reason for the problem was “incompatibility of some softwares at centres with servers”.

“This is for the first time CAT is being held online. Despite our efforts to keep a demo online, the students clicked wrong buttons, which in turn led to them facing problems. These are just teething problems. We will ensure that the students are accommodated in the slots that will be held over the next 10 days. Hopefully, this problem will not be repeated again,” Deodhar said.