Bangalore, February 23, 2007
The wait is certainly agonizing for Vaishanavi Kasturi, a visually impaired student, as she knocks on the doors of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore to know why she could not make it despite her excellent performance in CAT 2006.
On Friday, Vaishanavi’s father RK Kasturi spent several hours closeted with a team of officials from IIM-B, asking them why his daughter was not called for a group discussion and personal interview. Vaishanavi cleared the CAT with a percentile of 89.29, outdoing thousands of other candidates. She was certainly eligible to sit for the next round of tests — the group discussion and interview — what with the IIM-B setting a cut-off of 86.42 percentile for the disabled. But the call never came.
Disappointed, Vaishanavi’s family filed a notice under the Right to Information Act, which got Kasturi the meeting with the school authorities.
At the end of the discussion, Kasturi still did not have an answer for his daughter. He told the
Hindustan Times: “They told us that she did not make it because others (in the category of applicants with physical disabilities) were graduates or had work experience, etc. We had a long meeting and discussed many things because we want to understand where we stand. Let us wait till Monday (February 26). We have to attend a hearing at the
RTI Commissioner’s office that day. The group discussions and interviews are scheduled for April. Let us see what happens on Monday.”
For Vaishnavi — a sixth semester BCom student of a local college — the doors to IIM-B may not have opened for her but another prestigious institute, the MS Ramaiah Institute of Management, has offered her a free seat for a post-graduate diploma in management.
Vaishanavi, however, still hopes she will qualify for the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore at the end of the hearing at the
RTI Commissioner’s office in the state capital on Monday.
IIM says no to top scorer : HindustanTimes.com