The IIMs announced that the Online Common Admission Test (CAT) 2009 exam, in which 2.16 lakh candidates has appeared, will be held valid. The decision was made public after the meeting of IIM directors, the CAT committee members and senior HRD ministry officials in New Delhi.    

The decision has relieved the 2.16 lakh students, as there were fears that the IIM faculty might cancel the previous online test and arrange a retest on the paper format. It was expected that the retest might have clashed with the other MBA exams of the year 2010.

The online test has been conducted over 11 days starting from November 28, which was badly affected by the technical glitches at several testing sites and affected thousand candidates, who appeared in the exams. For the left candidates, which were not able to appear in the exams somehow, the IIMs have announced one extra date in January.

The IIM officials have informed that of the 2.41 lakh candidates, who registered for the CAT test, around 2.16 lakh completed the test successfully. The experts have expected that the cancellation of the test could have affected the future of many students.  

At this decision the Director of TIME Banglore, Mr. Ajay Arora said, “Based on our interactions with the candidates, we had found that the computerised CAT was not fair for all. Now, if the IIMs are convinced that the test has been fair for all, we should accept their decision.”

The CAT committee officials have informed that about 24,000 students, who registered but haven’t appeared for the CAT exam and there are still 2000 candidates who are yet to be tested for the exam.

The IIMS are further looking for a system which will provide opportunity for the candidates, which have not been able to complete the test due to reasons including, premature exit through the exit/end button, slowness of computers while reviewing and refreshing questions, rebooting of computers and disruptions, missing graphics and data.

The CAT test, which has been conducted in pencil-paper from last 33 years, was planned to be taken online this year. The US based company Prometric was assigned the job but the technical problems started appearing from the first day of the test schedule.