NLU consortium pulled up over ‘casual’ CLAT questions
Multiple petitions were filed in different high courts across the country alleging several questions in the exam were wrong.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday pulled up the consortium of national law universities (NLUs) for setting up exam papers for the Common Law Admission Test-Undergraduate (CLAT-UG) 2025 in the most “casual” manner and directed changes in the marking pattern of six questions.
A bench headed by justice Bhushan R Gavai also sought the Centre’s response to have a permanent mechanism for conducting CLAT-UG in line with the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to medical courses, and other combined tests, in the interest of students.
The CLAT UG-2025 for admissions to five-year LLB courses in NLUs was held on December 1, 2024 and results were declared on December 7. Multiple petitions were filed in different high courts across the country alleging several questions in the exam were wrong.
The court noted that in some questions, the answer key issued by the consortium was contrary to past top court judgments and in one particular question, the answer required students to make calculations, that could not be expected in an objective test to test legal reasoning.
“At the outset we must express our anguish at the casual manner in which the consortium has been framing the questions for CLAT exam which involves careers and aspirations of lakhs of students in the country,” the bench, also comprising justice Augustine George Masih, said, slamming the consortium.
The court was dealing with two petitions filed by CLAT aspirants challenging the April 23 decision of the Delhi high court, which scrutinised 17 questions and recommended changes in marking for four of those. The changes included grace marks being awarded to all candidates who attempted three out of the four sets of questions, excluding Set A.
Senior advocates KK Venugopal and Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, pointed out that errors in CLAT were not new and on two occasions in the past, — in 2013 and 2018 — the top court had expressed concern on the conduct of the entrance test and directed the Centre and the Bar Council of India (BCI) to take steps to ensure there is no loss caused to students.
The bench mooted for a permanent mechanism for conduct of CLAT and said: “Why should not there be a permanent mechanism to avoid these errors? What is the Union government doing about it? They can have a mechanism similar to what they have for conducting NEET, JEE, etc.”
