The Supreme on Friday permitted a group of Common Law Admission Test aspirants to make representations regarding issues with respect to this year's CLAT exam before the grievance redressal committee that is to be headed by a retired Chief Justice of India.
Justice Ashok Bhushan Stated that a decision must be taken by the committee at the earliest on the objections that have been raised by the aspirants.
The bench, however, refused to pass interim orders and declined to stay the counseling and admissions process.
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan, appearing on behalf of the petitioners, submitted that around 20,000 objections were raised with respect to technical glitches that were faced by the candidates during CLAT 2020 exam. The petitioners’ grievance is that the students were unable to put forth the answers that they wanted to give.
"In a lot of questions, the wrong model answers were given. Out of 40,000 objections, 20,000 were on questions and answers. I am on the other 20,000. The cut-off in this exam is not even 0, but -4. This is not only in this exam but in the history of any exam. This list has students who have got marks of -4. These students have been called for counseling.”
Senior Advocate PS Narasimha said "The retired Chief Justice (head of the grievance redressal committee) looks into these objections. The list readout is only for the SC/ST candidates and they have been only called for the interview and the calling makes no difference. What needs to see is it is alleged that the number of questions is lengthy. But the length has reduced from the last test.
So far as software glitches is concerned, this is an extraordinary exam as even a movement of the mouse by the student is recorded."
The bench, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, was hearing a petition filed by five CLAT aspirants who have appeared in CLAT 2020 and have contended that the results declared by the Consortium of National Law University (NLU) are totally wrong, erroneous, and therefore biased due to the following reasons:
• The candidates have chosen/selected/ticked correct answers; however, it is reflecting in a result that wrong & different options have been chosen/selected/ticked.
• The result is displaying and calculating marks in those questions, which were not even attempted by the candidates.
• Candidates have chosen/selected/ticked different options; however, as result, different answers are shown as chosen /selected /ticked.
• 10 questions are either wrong, or their answers which are uploaded on the website are wrong.
The petitioners have also contented the grievances relating to the unreasonably lengthy design of the paper which is stated to have had about 18,600 words to be read in the 120-minute to answer the exam which proved to be a great disadvantageous for the candidates who belonged to the non-English background.
The SC was hearing a write petition filed by a group of CLAT 2020 aspirants seeking a direction to NLSC to re-conduct the CLAT 2020.
This year, CLAT was held on 28th September in an online mode after multiple rounds of postponement due to COVID-19 contingencies.
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