New Delhi: "A dent is surely visible on the image of a premier institute like the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) after the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2009’s failure," says Mr. Shiv Kumar, Head of Research and Development, Career Launcher, a coaching institute for the preparation of CAT.

With a new day, there was a new story to tell. The highly competitive CAT, which went online for the first time this year, was hit by technical glitches and poor management, affecting students in as many as 24 test centres in 13 cities across the country.

In an exclusive interview with the National Network of Education, Mr. Kumar clearly said that, "The situation today is akin to what happened in CAT-2003 when the papers were leaked out. They should have avoided such blunders by conducting test-runs across the nation."

He harped upon the need of the management to conduct mock drills so that there were no hiccups faced by them. The students, coming from far-flung places had to face such an inconvenience after reaching the test centres.

The system did not work and the students were told to wait until the concerned persons arrive at a solution and ultimately they were asked to go back with a new date assigned to them.

Upon being asked whether the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) should re-schedule the whole date sheet until they resolve the problem he was ready with a prompt “No”.

He said, “I don’t think that the IIMs should re-schedule the whole date sheet as you can’t be sure that these glitches won’t re-occur. Considering the vast number in which the aspirants appear across the nation, there will always be some stray cases here and there.”

He claimed that this is going to be an “often-heard story” owing to the masses that the CAT caters to. “Suppose, I am not able to take the exam, there isn’t any common ground upon which the solution can be meted out,” he clearly stated.

He further put across his point by stating that, “It is not just the online test which is facing the problem, even the paper-pencil test faced difficulties. I am not sure if there is any single solution to the problem. Keeping in mind the convenience of the students, they provided them with a slot extending up to ten days, out of which they were free to choose any day.”

Although, the US firm Prometric that has developed the computer system for CAT and the CAT committee said the test had been mostly successful, Gautam Puri, vice chairman of Career Launcher, said that "This is a case of mismanagement, lack of planning and implementation. There are approximately 150-200 students taking CAT in each centre and that is not such a heavy number” local servers can take that load easily. There was no proper testing of the online version of the exam."

The impact of such a faux pas was experienced nationwide among the CAT aspirants and Mr. Kumar had a “mixed bag” of experience from students to share with us as some of them felt better upon learning that their session has been re-scheduled and they can get some extra time for preparation while others came complaining saying, "This was the best day I could appear for the examination."