Plea against CAT '13: HRD min, IIM-Indore told to reserve 8

Madras High Court today directed the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development and IIM-Indore to reserve eight seats for petitioners who had moved court against the Common Admission Test conducted by IIMs and sought a stay on the entire admission process for this year.
Justice R Subbaiah directed the IIM and the ministry to reserve one seat for each of the petitioners.
Alleging large-scale irregularities in the manner in which CAT was conducted for entrance to the 13 IIMs, the said aspirants moved court seeking a stay on the admission process.
The petitioners questioned the exam format, saying that "the computerised format CAT, 2013, was conducted over a period of 20 days; the obvious consequence of it was varying standards of difficulty for the candidates."

The level of difficulty was different for each lot on each day of the tests.
The method of 'equating', 'scaling' and 'normalisation' used by authorities while scoring CAT, 2013, was "unlawful and erroneous", they contended.

The process, known as normalisation of scores, had caused 'grave irregularities' in the marking process, they said.
It has been proven that those who did not attempt even a single question were awarded a percentile of 55.46, which implies that more than 50 per cent of the 1.7 lakh candidates who took CAT scored zero or even less, they added.
The entire registration process -- setting up of test centres, compilation of questions, evaluation of answers and calculation and publication of results -- have all been outsourced to a Gurgaon-based company, Prometric Testing Private Ltd.

Describing this year's results as 'shocking', the petitioners said the normalised scores of several thousand candidates were not in consonance with the number of questions attempted by them.
Citing the case of one Gautam Puri, a faculty of Career Launcher India Ltd who takes the test every year, they said he had not attempted any question in CAT, 2013, but had got an overall score of 165 out of 450 and an overall percentile of 55.46.
Alleging a lack of transparency in the evaluation process, they urged the court to stay admissions to the 13 IIMs as well as other institutions which were using the CAT, 2013, scores for admissions.

They also urged the court to direct authorities to reserve a seat for each of the eight students who had moved HC.
As a final relief, they wanted the court to quash the entire CAT, 2013, held between October 16 and November 1, 2013.