PaGaLGuY carried a story on the glitches in the CAT 2015 exam, crammed centres, far-off centres etc yesterday. 

We asked CAT Convenor Prof Thathagata Bandyopadhyay about the complaints.  Read on what he had to say.  

Complaints of glitches came from all over the country. In Kolkata, some computers broke down?

The entire day I was in the TCS Command centre in Mumbai along with their key operations team members and were always in touch with all the centres across India. We did not hear anything of the sort you are mentioning. In case it happened it was not a major problem. Also in case a candidate’s computer was locked, the lost time was compensated. I hope you should appreciate that the exam went off well without any major glitch. A minor problem here and there was, of course, unavoidable in spite of the best efforts from our end.  

In Hyderabad, about 30-40 candidates could not take exam because of immense confusion as there were other exams being conducted there today. 

I have not heard anything of what you are mentioning. It is a surprising news considering the fact that we had been in touch with all the centres across India during the exams. In a few cases, we took real time decision to allow the candidates to take the exam even if they had reached the centres late if we found the reason for their late arrival was genuine (like a road accident).

Some called saying that e-adhaar cards were not being allowed.

Unfortunately yes, but in a very few cases, may be 20 at the most all over India. On the admit card it was clearly written that “At least one orginal (not photocopied or scanned) and valid (not expired) photo identification card ( such as College ID, Employer ID, Driving License, Passport, PAN card, Voter ID, Adhaar UID, Identification Affidavit should also be presented.” E-adhaar is not acceptable since it is a print-copy of the original Adhaar card and could easily be tampered.

Some centres were really far away and there was a problem getting to the centre?

We allowed three cases in Kohlapur because of jam due to rad accident and one in Nagpur because she herself met with an accident. We have not heard anything about the cases you are mentioning.We inspected every centre a month before the exam and if the report was not positive we requested TCS to change it. Most of these centres are used by TCS regularly for other exams.