AHMEDABAD: The Common Admission Test (CAT) for admissions to post-graduate management courses in the Indian Institutes of Management and other business schools was held at 160 centres in 24 cities across the country on Sunday.

The IIM, Ahmedabad, Director, Bakul Dholakia, who is also the chairman of the CAT group, said there were no complaints of trouble or malpractices from any centre during the day.

As many as 1.70 lakh candidates had applied for the test this year, a 12 per cent increase from 1.52 lakh candidates last year. Considering that absentees on an average comprise nine per cent, about 1.55 lakh candidates had taken it this year.

More institutions

Besides the six IIMs in the country, the CAT score would be the criteria for admissions in 75 business schools in the country as against 54 institutions last year. "The number of institutions joining the CAT group for admissions is increasing every year," Prof. Dholakia said.

The six IIMs together have about 1,300 seats.

The IIM-A, which has 280 seats in three different post-graduate management courses had no plans to increase the number of seats but the IIM, Indore and the IIM, Kozhikode were likely to increase their intake from the next academic year.

Results in six weeks

Prof. Dholakia said the results of the test were expected to be announced in about six weeks, while the personal interviews for finalising admissions would be conducted from the middle of February till the end of March.

He refused to comment on the format of the question paper, which he said was decided by the examination group, but said last year's experiment of reducing the questions from 150 to 123 was found suitable and this year they were further reduced to 90.

CBI inquiry

About the progress in the CBI inquiry into the leakage of the question paper in November 2003, Prof. Dholakia said he had no idea about the progress.

Inquiries made by the IIMs had failed to elicit any response from the CBI. But the internal inquiry made by the CAT group had resulted in tighter security in the preparation and transportation of the question papers.

Pointing out that it was the third "successful test" since the leakage, he said security was one of the main reasons for "outsourcing" the holding of the test this year.

He refused to comment on the reported move by the Union Human Resource Development Ministry to introduce reservation for minorities in the IIMs and IITs.

"It is too early to consider the issue. We will give it a thought only after we receive any written communication from the Centre on the subject," he said.

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