The 500 unexpected test-takers were those who had not received a hall pass for the exam, but were permitted to sit for it on the basis of supplying proof of AIBE application, fee payment and undertaking form, explained a representative of ITES Horizon, who identified himself as Zubaid, at the Amity Noida exam venue today. ITES is the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) AIBE partner-agency for the fourth AIBE.
Various other examinees told Legally India that a lack of coordination in the seating plan, such as wrong seat numbers printed on hall passes combined with the fact of some test takers for whom no seating was pre-planned, resulted in confusion and chaos for more than an hour, as everyone clustered around the single seating arrangement plan displayed for the rather large venue spanning four separate buildings.
Zubaid declined to provide the exact number of candidates who appeared today, as reflected in the pre-exam roll call for one of the venues, but speculated that the number of candidates present at the Delhi Centre today was close to 4,000, inside four blocks of the Amity University campus in Sector 125 Noida.
The expected list of candidates in Noida was 3,271, according to a list published by the BCI on Saturday.
The exam was scheduled to begin at 11 am today, though only started at nearly 11:30 in some buildings. A large number of candidates were seen by Legally India to have walked out before 1:30pm, unlike in the previous and third AIBE in January when many were not able to finish answering on time.
An Indraprastha University Delhi graduate who had attempted but not cleared the third AIBE told Legally India that he had used the materials first provided by the BCI and its previous partner agency in 2010, which mostly sufficed in answering the questions today.
The BCI this time did not provide any hard copy materials to carry along for the open book exam, unlike the last three AIBEs, despite hiking the registration fee from Rs 1300 to Rs 1900. But 10 days ago it had released a list of 100 sample questions which included general-knowledge type questions, and rote-based questions such as those asking for section numbers for various legal provisions.
Such questions did not play a major role in today’s test paper, according to candidates. One said: “I request the BCI to stop taking this exam if they are going to ask questions which are answered after flipping two or three pages of the bare act. When they are asking nothing conceptual, why not let second year law students take the exam instead of graduates?”
The number of exam centres was increased this time to 59, but there were only two centres for the Delhi NCR region, with the other one at ITM Law School in Gurgaon, Haryana. Around 35,000 candidates were expected to appear, said the BCI chairman in late November.
The exam this time may earn the BCI revenues of up to Rs 6 crores, out of which software development company ITES Horizon may get paid around Rs 2 crores.
Breakdown
A total of 32,230 candidates were entitled to appear and allotted examination venues according to lists of candidates in each state that were published by the BCI yesterday.
According to that list, 5,592 were set to appear in Maharashtra and Goa, with Tamil Nadu being the second largest AIBE state at 3,645 candidates, followed by Delhi/Noida (3,271), Gujarat (2,958), Karnataka (2,797) and Andhra Pradesh (2,714).
Social media reactions not good
Some feedback from one AIBE taker via Facebook: “Very Very basic paper. Mostly bare acts. Easy to score at least 50 out of 100… But definitely lil grammatical errors in the questions which actually changed the meaning of the question.”
“It was fine but as one guy said above grammatical errors really hampered answering some questions,” responded another examinee on the social media network.
“Great, all the best guys… hope you all pass easily and aibe shall take some shame and think over this exam system,” wrote another, while one complained “Bulls[…]… no value for time” and someone else agreed “highly unorganised..bull shit arrangement”.
Another commented: “Paper was good but the center in Delhi n d whole exam system was disgusting.”
On Twitter, @atulonerocker wrote: “#AIBE was fine. But Organization was zero… I took more than 1 hr to find my room. No bell rings. Nothing!”
“The exam by itself was really simple albeit with numerous errors. Planning poor though, I started writing at 11.30am,” tweeted @rohanrobby and added: “The #AIBE had one question being what year the Minimum Wages Act was in effect from & 1948 wasn’t in the options. Amateurish.”
Comments
I would like to thank the people who made arrangements at Test Centre No. 5 in Bangalore, our state bar council members who attended, and the staff who helped, for making the exam a very pleasant experience.
The Bangalore exam at the Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering went off very well.
There was a good amount of well-intentioned staff circulating trying to help people, they had a good attitude, there was well organized security at the gate and only proper people were admitted. The college grounds are very peaceful and the weather was gorgeous. Our state bar council members could be seen circulating and encouraging people. The other exam takers were well behaved.
Frankly, if I could have had a nice cup of coffee during the exam it would have been a perfectly pleasant way to spend a Sunday.
Of course, the exam itself was rubbish!
Please note, if you are citing examples of what happened in specific exam centres, please do say in which exam centre it happened, so we can try to confirm.
Though there is always scope of improvement, there are bound to be some hiccups/problems when an All India Exam is conducted in which more than 32000 candidates sit. And I am sure with time, things would be streamlined and problems would be taken care of.
Instead of maligning the Bar Council of India and its office bearers about its organisation of the exam and the level of toughness of questions on public sites, we should instead give constructive feedback directly to the BCI.
And if you are so bugged up with the simplicity of the questions/paper, maybe you should ask BCI to increase the toughness next year and take the exam again as a challenge (I am sure they will chicken out at that). There would always be people who would be complaining about something or the other, viz, so-called mismanagement, easy paper, tough paper, so and so.
I strongly believe that considering the geographic spread of the exam and the fact that it has only just started in the past year or two, BCI is doing a good job with scope for further improvement with time as is the case with any new endeavour/venture.
Regards,
Rajesh
The mismanagement/confusion led to a walk out by about 75% of the candidates and angry protests about the said mismanagement/Confusion led to the exam at Jaipur center being cancelled.
This has put us applicants in a very peculiar position as no further notification from the Bar has been given.
It was a sad show of utter loss of civic sense by the miscreants and for now our future has been put on hold due to the acts of a few.
Ya! I was also a candidate at Bhopal centre.
I finished my exam within 1hr 20mins. and submitted my answer sheet+question paper to invigilator.
I was quite happy and sure that my 40% were guaranteed!
But after coming out of the exam centre, I came to know that the exam got cancelled!
Will they re-oragnise the exam only for those centres on which exam got cancelled? Can anyone tell me please??
1. Extremely poor organization by Amity, Noida and the BCI.
2. The crappiest exam I have given till date and this is taking into account all the exams I've written in five years of Law School.
a) Grammatical Errors - How difficult is it to word a question with four valid choices using proper grammar;
b) Incorrectly worded questions - inclusions / exclusions / alterations to the options which changed the meaning of the options itself;
c) Massive unforgivable spelling errors - Res Ipsa Loquitur ;
d) Major mix-ups in the questions itself - Hell, don't they know the difference between the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860;
d) Questions which is no way challenged your legal knowledge but tested your kinetic energy - how many bare acts could one carry, how quickly could one run with that huge bag across centers / floors, how speedily could one pull up the relevant bare act and sift through sections or jog one’s memory or guess the answer.
Angry Birds... indeed!
1. Who said jurisprudence is the 'extra versions' of lawyers!?
2. When was the first Indian Bar Commission constituted?
3. Who said "rule of law is the antithesis of arbitrariness...." in the famous habeas corpus case!?
4. When was the Indian Council of Arbitration established!?
I feel saddened to say that even school examinations are organised better than this. There was no element of seriousness involved or the fact that this was a monumental test for aspiring lawyers and advocates alike. The questions required a mere perusal of bare acts, and even then we had people asking for the right answers, screaming and verifying the same across the width of the classrooms.
All of this begs the important question: why have the test in the first place? Why this giant symbolic gesture to appease a few people who believe in the just principle of ensuring quality in legal practitioners if you're not going to be serious about it?
Disillusioned and disheartened.
As I wrote earlier, the Center No 5 in Bangalore was very well organised. I saw none of what this writer describes.
I read with horror the chaos in the various North Indian centres.
The Bangalore Police were present and kept good order on the road outside the Center. I've been to weddings that were less well organised and yet considered great successes.
I've been plenty scornful of this whole process so when the actual experience proved well organised and very peacefully executed In Bangalore I feel obliged to mention it.
Ponugot Madhava Rao law college- people discussed the answers throughout the three hours and even the invigilator asked candidates for answers on request. the whole thing was so poorly conducted- BCI should look into this. Why not get invigilators who are instructed to tell the candidates that it is a open book and not a group examinaiton?