Their smile was our reward: Prof Krishna Kant

IT IS a test to counsel others but it is a battle to counsel oneself during nerve wracking moments. And this battle was fought well by the members of counselling committee for All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE)-2006 at Motilal Nehru National of Institute of Technology (MNNIT) on day three of the counselling that was scheduled for the open category candidates. The counselling finally concluded after 10 days at the MNNIT on Friday.

"The day three which was also the first day of counselling for the open category drew over 1100 students from UP and Uttaranchal," said Prof Krishna Kant, an IT expert and chairman of counselling committee, who added that since the number of reporting students was larger than previous years, the extra load was exerted on the software, server and of course humanware.

The counselling which ran smoothly till 12.30 pm, received its first jolt with technical snag in BSNL lines.

"The band width was provided by BSNL and four lines of 2 Mbps each were installed , after 12.30 pm, it was detected that processing of counselling had slowed down drastically," said Prof Rajeev Tripathi recalling the moment.

The matter was immediately reported to BSNL authorities who after taking time detected the loophole.

"We were informed that traffic on two lines was overloaded as other two lines were not functioning," said Prof Krishna Kant who added that rescue operation began immediately by the team including Dr Neeraj Tyagi, Rajesh Yadav, and others.

The team immediately isolated the lines to ensure the smooth counselling. This did not end the test as the climax was still to come.

"We had hardly heaved a sigh of relief, when we received an SOS call that CCB sites were not accessible," said Prof Rajeev Tripathi.The inaccessibility of the NIC server completely paralysed the counselling but rescue team led by Prof Krishna Kant while braving the erupting volcanic ire of students, contacted the NIC officials manning the server at Delhi.

Meanwhile NIC officials Praveen Singh and Raghvendra Singh began server testing operations, but came to know that only CCB sites were not accessible while other sites were posing no such problem.

"After ensuring that other sites were functioning normal, we sent an error report to NIC headquarters," said NIC official Raghvendra Singh.

Taking the report into cognisance National Informatics Centre created a mirror site to enable smooth counselling. This, however, did not solve the problem as processing remained slow.

"It was really a nerve wracking moment as nothing was in the hand of counselling members", said Prof Rajeev Tripathi who maintained that an emergent meeting was called and the verification, fee and registration work was set apart from counselling.

"We were determined to hold the counselling and our spirit remained high with continuous boosting by fellow members," said Prof Krishna Kant , a "never- say-die" man who revealed that various alternatives like raising the number of application servers, number of computer terminals were tested and experimented at wee hours.

The counselling which was scheduled to be over by 6.00 pm, began inching towards night hours. After testing various alternatives, we pumped in all our available resources to begin counselling, claimed Prof Krishna who informed that all the members despite wrath of counselling aspirants, remained calm and cool.

He also said that number of students was a matter of concern as each student was having over 200 options to choose from and which ultimately raised the occupancy time of computer terminals.

The counselling ultimately began at 2 am midnight and continued till 7 am the next day. "We had sleepless nights to shatter the nightmares of students and we got our greatest reward in the form of smile of students who also maintained their calm to become a vibrant technocrat," said Prof Krishna Kant.