PUNE: In a virtual revisit to chaos during online CAT examination for Indian Institutes of Management (IIM), the maiden online examination of first year engineering, conducted by the University of Pune (UoP) was hit by non-availability of bandwidth on Wednesday.

As a result, the exam was delayed by four hours, disrupting the entire schedule.

The online examination of  Fundamental of Programming Languages of first year engineering semester I course was scheduled to begin in the city at 9 am on Wednesday.

UoP had planned first phase of online exam in 23 colleges on Wednesday while FY students in remaining 46 colleges were scheduled to appear for exam on Friday.

Accordingly, 23 colleges in the first phase were asked to start exams from 9 am onwards. But the centrally located server was unable to connect, as the required bandwidth was not available. This threw the exam schedule out of gear.

Since the UoP server was unable to connect, colleges asked students to wait in the campus. For many, this anxious wait continued till the evening as university rescheduled the timings. MIT College of Engineering, Progressive Education Society's Modern College of Engineering and M.E.S College of Engineering were among the colleges hardest hit by technical snags.  The Online paper of fifty marks had 25 questions. Some students complained that the software was not properly showing number of questions attempted by students.

 Prakash Wani, dean of engineering faculty, said “We got required bandwidth at 1 pm. It caused inconvenience to students. At 2 pm all colleges were hooked up and the exam started. At MIT College of Engineering, one batch could not hold exam due to local server problem."