a circuitous route a long road a journey these are words that have probably been appropriated for the first time for an exam reaching the test site to take the common admission test cat was a nightmare for several candidates for one students taking the test from chennai had to travel miles to an industrial town in the neighbouring district of kancheepuram the centre saveetha engineering college in thandalam sriperumbudur is 40 km from chennai 22 km from the mofussil bus terminus in koyembedu 28 km from chennais meenambakkam airport and 30 km from the central railway station there are no trains to the area a candidate said that no one goes to sriperumbudur not even politicians who tread dusty roads in indias hinterland the last man spotted was former prime minister rajiv gandhi who was assassinated by a human bomb there in may 1991an irate sherin deepak who had travelled from tiruchi to take the test in chennai said i had my airbag with me and it was only after i fought with the security guard that he allowed me to leave my bag inside the campus it was very annoyingthe indian institute of managements decision to overrule the directive of the hrd ministry to roll out common admission test cat in all states and union territories became a logistical nightmare for hundreds of students belling this years catmalathy name changed a postgraduate student from thiruvananthapuram had to travel all the way to bangalore to appear for the online test on wednesday as there was no cat centre in the kerala capital although nearly 6000 students are taking the exam in kerala there are only two centres cochin and kozhikode when i logged in to register for the exam not a single slot was available i had no option but to take the exam in bangalore she told toi after the 215hour exam which took place in the firsthalf of the daythe ministrys intention was clear it wanted management schools which tend to draw talent mostly from urban corners to be inclusive in nature the hrd ministry had hence asked the iims to hold cat in all states and uts including cities with a population in excess of 1 million but the iims rejected the idea stating it was not feasible directors of all iims and chairman of the cat centre decided to inform the ministry conveying the impracticability of providing such a large number of cat centresafter the tech fiasco of last years cat iims and prometric the american testing agency decided to expand the cat testing days from 10 to 20 but that doesnt seem to have helped candidates across india cat 2010 is being administered only in 18 states and within them only in a couple of top cities candidates who braved their way to their centres were shocked to find how skewed the distribution of students was in the morning nirmaladevi college in kandivali mumbai had one student for 200 computers on the other