29 November,2009 11:32 AM IST | | PTI
The computer-based Common Admission Test (CAT) in around 50 centres across the country were on Sunday rescheduled to allow necessary repairs to be completed at the labs where technical glitches disrupted the exams on the first day.
Prometric, the American firm which has been entrusted with the task of conducting the tests, said while a significant majority of the candidates successfully completed their exams on Saturday, various technical issues arose at selected computers in approximately 50 labs that prevented approximately 2,000 exams from being delivered.
"Prometric technicians have been dispatched to address these isolated problems. To avoid candidate inconvenience and to allow for the necessary repairs to be completed at the impacted labs, Prometric has scheduled a closure of these labs today," an announcement on the CAT-IIM official website said.
"Candidates affected by this closure will also be notified by Prometric in the manner described above and provided with new appointments within this year's testing period," the announcement said.
It said Prometric has generated new appointments for individuals who could not take the test yesterday and they are in the process of being contacted through SMS and email messages.
The first-ever experiment of the IIMs to conduct its CAT using computers ran into trouble yesterday in many centres across the country.
Soon after the exam started, students faced problems in opening the computers at 11 centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Bhopal. Among the centres that will be closed today, 11 are in Bangalore, followed by Bhopal (8), Lucknow (6), Mumbai (6), New Delhi (5), Ghaziabad (4), Varanasi (2), Hyderabad (2), Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Nagpur, Kolkata and Coimbatore (1 each).
