Govt: Who's responsible for the CAT fiasco?

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today said the ministry has sought a detailed report into the server crash during the online Common Admission Test (CAT) examination.

"We have sought a detailed report on the virus problem during the CAT examination," he told reporters outside Parliament.

Yesterday, the HRD ministry sought a report from the Convener of CAT Satish Deodhar on the disruption of the test conducted by American firm Prometric. Nearly 2.41 lakh candidates are to appear for the exam, in order to secure admission into IIMs and other B-Schools.

The computer-based test has been marred by technical glitches from the very first day, November 28. Students faced problems from computers at exam centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Bhopal.

Sibal said as per the information collected by the HRD ministry, a total of 8,297 examinees out of 45,367 students could not appear for the test on Saturday due to the crashing of the server.

Asked about the date of re-examination for the affected students, Sibal said the government is not involved in the process and that the IIMs will have to decide upon it, as a large number of students could not take the entrance test.

Expressing his concern over the issue, he said steps should have been taken beforehand to ensure that the exam-takers did not face any technical problems. "We do not want such glitches to occur again," he added.