Close to 100 final-year students of accounting and finance in some city colleges fear losing 15 marks in their cost accounting paper. They claim that the fifth question carrying 15 marks had an error which was not corrected at some centres.

A few candidates who took the exam on Friday said they realized that there was a problem only on Saturday when they discussed the question with their batchmates and friends. The fifth question quizzed students on the material and labour variance. The number of hours mentioned in the question was 100, but in most colleges, the same was corrected to 10. "No one informed us of the change at my exam centre. First, solving the problem with 100 hours took a lot of time, but now because of the negligence of the college, all of us will lose 15 marks," said Tarun Lohar, a student of Jai Hind College, who took the exam from N L Dalmia College. "I tried contacting the university to register my grievance but no one picked up the phone," he added.

He is not the only one. At Viva College in Virar too, students said they were not informed of any change. "I realized that a rejoinder had come from the university and accordingly, the change was made at most colleges. But no such announcement was made at my centre," claimed a student who took the exam from Viva College.

Controller of examinations Padma Deshmukh said she would look into the matter. "When we realized that the paper setter had made a mistake, we sent the corrected version to all the centres. I will see why a few centres did not communicate the correction to the candidates." On Friday, around 85 MSc (information technology) students too were given wrong paper at Kirti College. The students were given paper meant for MSc (computer science). The matter will be placed before the board of examinations which meets early next week.