Candidates outside an OJEE exam centre in Bhubaneswar on Sunday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, May 6: Controversy and chaos today marked the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE)-2012.

A youth was arrested from a centre in Calcutta on charges of impersonating a candidate, while a small bunch of students, who had turned up at various centres in the capital, missed the exam as their roll numbers did not figure in the seat arrangement chart.

Barely half-an-hour before the first sitting began at 9am, some candidates complained that they could not find their roll numbers on the list at the allotted centres. However, OJEE authorities said it was not on account of mismanagement, but because of mistakes committed by the candidates during the form fill-up process.

“The candidates had entered the wrong course code in their forms and the admit cards were generated accordingly. We had corrected the course code for around 200 students, who had come to our office in the past few years. But, it was not possible on our part to correct this on the day of exam. The students should have been more careful while filling up forms or approached us earlier,” said OJEE committee vice-chairman Sitaram Mohapatra.

For these students now, the only option is to wait for the entrance test next year. “We cannot hold another test for these students this year. They have only themselves to blame for filling up forms irresponsibly,” said OJEE committee secretary Priyabrat Sahoo.

Nearly one lakh students appeared for the OJEE today, held at 182 centres in the state, including 42 in the capital. There were two sittings — 9am to 1pm and 2.30pm to 4.30 pm. For the first time, the authorities had set up centres outside the state in major cities such as Calcutta, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, Patna, Ranchi, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Vizag, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Referring to the Calcutta incident, Sahoo said they were yet to receive details about the youth arrested for impersonating an OJEE candidate.

“The centre superintendent seized his admit card and handed him over to police. We can disclose the culprit’s name and other details once we get the report tonight,” he said.

The pre-medical entrance test of the much sought-after Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune, clashed with the OJEE today, forcing several MBBS aspirants to skip the important exam.

“OJEE is more broad-based in terms of choice of colleges, so I could not risk missing it to take the test for one college,” said Supriya, a candidate.

AFMC has 130 seats, including 25 for girls.