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.”