Candidates taking Delhi Universitys LLB entrance test lost valuable time at the examination halls on Sunday because of a goof-up by the authorities. The question paper instructed the students to use an HB pencil to mark the answers,but the invigilators told them to write with a black ballpoint pen. The contradictory directions led to a lot of confusion. Hitesh Aggarwal,who appeared for the test at Miranda House,said: The instructions on the question paper said we should use a pencil. Ten minutes later,we were told to use a black pen. By then,most of us had already started writing with a pencil. We did not get extra time to finish the paper. Another candidate,Asif,said he lost almost 20 minutes because of the confusion. If you use a black ballpoint pen in the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheet,you do not have the option of making changes later. Hence,we wasted more time because we were marking answers in the question booklet and not in the OMR sheet. The candidates later filed a petition with the law faculty dean at Miranda House,Asif added. Admitting the goof-up,Miranda House principal Dr Pratibha Jolly said: At a meeting prior to the exam,the college had been told that the students could only use a black ballpoint pen to answer the paper. However,the directions on the question paper said an HB pencil should be used. Observers from the law faculty were present during the exam and even they said the candidates should use a black ballpoint pen. The result was that some students ended up answering the paper with a pencil while others used a pen. The college is only providing space for conducting the exams. It is now for the law faculty to decide what to accept. They shouldnt have given such ambiguous statements, she added. A senior law faculty official,however,said that both papers would be evaluated.
