Principals say mock-drill papers landed late,fear chaos at BCom exam today

Several centres claimed they had received the weblink late. “We were told that the mock question papers would be sent via a weblink at 2.30 pm on Tuesday,but they arrived at around 2.45 pm. We were ready with the resources,but it was delayed. A delay of this sort can lead to chaos during the exam,” a college principal who declined to be identified,said.

Around 80,000 students are expected to appear for the TYBCom exams beginning Thursday. The larger centres have 1,000-1,500 students; the smaller ones around 800-1,200.

College principals critical of the university’s experiment pointed out that some colleges did not have facilities for high-speed photocopying.

“Photocopy machines in some colleges can copy only about 30 pages per minute. This may still be manageable for a one-page question paper. However,question papers for some compulsory accountancy subjects run into six pages. Colleges are not equipped to take prints of 9,000 pages in 30-45 minutes. But then again,if the question papers are sent too early,there is the risk of a leak,” said a principal.

The university introduced DEPDS for engineering,pharmacy,law and B.Ed exams last October,and decided to extend the system to TYBCom this year.

Deepak Wasave,in-charge,Controller of Examinations,however,said Tuesday’s mock drill had been successful,and all centres had downloaded the question papers.

“The software is such that the university is informed as soon as a college starts downloading the paper,” he said,adding that this allowed the university to monitor any possible delays. An alert for a delay or glitch immediately sets in motion a process of contacting the college to facilitate the download.

Wasave also said that longer question papers would be sent a little earlier so that colleges have enough time to download,print,staple and keep the papers ready well before the scheduled time of the exam.