Ministry of HRD has set up a committee to probe into the inflated CAT score scam and ‘fix accountability’ for the discrepancies that has caused major embarrassment for Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and marred the credibility of the most prestigious MBA entrance exam used by many top non-IIMs for admission process also.
In an official statement, IIMs said that a special committee has been set up by the HRD Ministry to probe into the different aspects of the inflated CAT scores published on the official CAT website. The committee has also been entrusted with suggesting corrective measures on this crisis.
“A committee is set up by MHRD to fix accountability and take corrective measures,” the CAT 2012 Convenor said.
According to the sources, the members of the committee include IIM Trichy BoG Chairman M Damodaran, IIM-A director In-charge Ajay Pandey and IIM Bangalore Dean Devanath Tirupati.
The committee will look into how the CAT scores published on the official website got tampered and what caused this loophole. It will also review the list of 80 inflated CAT IDs and look into the details of all possible fraudulent activities that might have taken place in getting the inflated CAT scores published on CAT website.
MBAUniverse.com was first to report this scam on June 24, 2013 at 11 AM. After MBAUniverse.com published the report, some of the top B-schools have already initiated action.
A police investigation into the matter is underway after the IIMs had earlier lodged an FIR into the CAT scores discrepancies.
As many as 80 of the total 2,14,068 CAT 2012 scores published by M/s. Web Weavers were found inflated. According to the IIMs the maintenance of the official website including website hosting and management had been entrusted to Web Weavers’ since CAT 2010.
The IIMs also said that all the Institutes that use CAT scores for selection of candidates have been alerted. “Subsequently, the CAT center has shared the CAT scores of the candidates from the master database to all the non-IIM Institutes who use CAT scores for their admission,” the CAT 2012 Convenor said.
In a shocking revelation, IIMs had admitted that CAT scorecards available officially to non-IIMs for admission year 2013-14 have been ‘tampered’ with inflated scores of some candidates. According to IIMs, scorecards of as many as 80 testing IDs available on official CAT website have been found inflated as compared to the actual scores available with IIMs in the master datasheet of CAT 2012 scorecards.
The unfolding details of CAT score scam revealed that many of the 80 candidates with inflated CAT scores have already entered the final selection list of different B-schools even as most of them figured in GD/PI short list of multiple top B-schools like FMS-Delhi, DMS-IIT Delhi, NITIE, IIT Roorkee, FMS-BHU, MDI etc.
The IIMs have, however, claimed that their own admissions are unaffected as they have used the master datasheet of scorecards directly received from Prometric, the agency that conducts CAT testing on behalf of IIMs, for short-listing.
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