Hey MR as173d,
I solved the issue finally 
the problem was that the default JNDI configuration in “configure servers” under “define environments” was pointing to universal messaging by default and I was using Broker.
I figured this out when i checked the data collector optimize logs, it was throwing a jndiNamingException
MWS 9.6 configuration was deployed successfully while this error was occuring, which is very wierd
Thanks for your help 
#webMethods-BPMS#webMethods#BPM