Unhappy over thousands of students failing to write the Common Admission Test (CAT) due to technical problems, the government has convened a meeting of IIM directors on Wednesday to express its concerns. Higher Education Secretary Vibha Puri Das will chair the meeting of IIM directors to discuss the issue in detail, a Human Resource Development Ministry official said.
Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal had expressed his displeasure with students facing problems during the computerised test. The issue rocked Parliament with BJP members criticising the government for the fiasco.
The test, which was supposed to be taken by 2.41 lakh students, was conducted by an American firm Prometric in a staggered manner over 11 days. However, many candidates failed to appear in the test due to the so called "virus attack".
Meanwhile, the IIM directors met in Mumbai yesterday and reviewed the entire computerised test. The ministry is expected to tell the IIM directors to have a foolproof system in place to avoid any such problem in future. Sibal had already said that precautions should have been taken before starting the computer-based CAT.
The CAT was disrupted by virus attack from the first day of the test, which was supposed to be held over 10 days. About 8,500 candidates could not appear in the test in the first four days due to the glitch. Then the test was extended by a day.
Hundreds of IIM aspirants had failed to appear in the CAT, IIM Ahmedabad, which is the nodal IIM for the CAT this year, had said. A new test date will be announced in about a fortnight to provide an opportunity to all such candidates to write the test, it said.
About 20,000 candidates were rescheduled after the test was affected by the virus attack and other technical problems. CAT was held through 361 labs in 104 locations spread across 32 cities.