Flawed paper and flawed execution

The first hint of the problem in JEE 2010 came within minutes of the start of examination at 0900 hrs on April 11. Students found that the ORS (Optical Response Sheet) on which answers are to be given had a mismatch with the question paper. While the question paper had questions numbered 30-58 for Mathematics and 59-87 for Physics, the ORS showed 30-58 for Physics and 59-87 for Mathematics. The candidates who noticed the discrepancy asked for clarifications. However, the same must come from the organizing IIT, which was IIT Madras this year. With calls coming from all over India, it is said that the phone lines at IITM jammed. For example, IIT Bombay could connect officially to IIT Madras only by 11 AM, two hours into the examination. In the meanwhile, at several centers, the local representatives and local invigilators gave instructions as per their understanding of the situation. Some advised that the order in question paper should be deemed as correct while others advised otherwise. At some centers, students were advised to take their own decisions. Official word reached the centers at variable times and the students got instructions in some cases far too late. Some centers went without instructions. At many centers, the students had to erase their answers and mark them again after the official instructions were received and were found contrary to the instructions given earlier. The confusion, the mental torture, and the loss of time the students must have gone through can at best be imagined in the drawing rooms. Even the IIT faculty invigilating at the centers had anxious time and high BP.

How IIT will accommodate such variations, infact IIT itself has made the task complicated by issuing the instructions to invigilators, some time these instructions were similar to what was already instructed to candidates at many times these were contradictory. South centres were of course beneficiary to flawed system because there were the first centers where the correct instruction was passed.

With so much confusion IIT can not claim that it’s result are fair