In a major decision, the Supreme Court today refused to stay the counselling of Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2018. After six CLAT aspirants approached the apex court to quash the entrance test and conduct a fresh as the examinees faced many technical glitches during the online exam. The Supreme Court later informed that it will hear the pleas on May 24, 2018. SC’s decision not to conduct the exam afresh has come as a disappointment to all the CLAT candidates. Further notifications on the same are still awaited.

The CLAT candidates further informed about the poor infrastructure at the examination centres and lack of proper guidance from the staff. Hence, they prayed for a stay on the publication of final result-cum-merit list till the removal of the petitions; reported IANS. A bench of Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice Navin Sinha sought to understand if any high court in the past has taken or passed any order on similar pleas. The bench also asked whether the CLAT authorities have filed their response before any high court on the pleas. Petitioners’ counsel was asked to provide the copy of petitions to the conducting body National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS) and the Core Committee of CLAT.

Supreme Court Refused to Stay Counselling of CLAT 2018. 

After much of controversies, the Supreme Court’s verdict had jeopardized the future of thousands of CLAT’s aspirants who took the examination this year. Students from almost 200 online exam centres complained to face technical error and said online infrastructure were not made available to them on the day of the exam. The plea informed the problems included power cuts, failure of the log-in system, slow biometric verification, blank screens, substantial loss of time in system log-ins, frequent resetting of computer systems, hanging of computer systems, server shutdown and even difficulties in moving from one question to another.

“For instance, at an examination centre at Hissar in Haryana, some students were seen attempting the examination till 7.00 p.m, whereas the exam was expected to conclude at 5.00 p.m itself. In essence, it is submitted that petitioners and thousands of other similarly placed students were compelled to take the examination under grossly unfair condition seriously jeopardizing their result,” the petitions submitted.

Common Law Admission Test, commonly known as CLAT is conducted annually by National Law Universities (NLUs) for admission to their undergraduate Law programmes (BA LLB, B.Com LLB and B.Sc. LLB). The two-hour admission test consists of objective type covering questions on Elementary Mathematics or Numerical Ability, English with Comprehension, General knowledge and Current affairs, Legal Aptitude and Legal Awareness and Logical reasoning.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 06, 2018 01:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).