Supreme Court Ruled out CLAT 2018 Re-Test, Asks the GRC to look into the Complaints

SC has ruled out CLAT 2018 re-test. It has asked the GRC to look into the complaints.

12 June 2018: In a decision on 11 June, the Supreme Court has refused to order a re-examination for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2018. Earlier on 06 June, the court has also refused to stop the counselling process. Candidates had complained about the technical glitches during the CLAT examination which was conducted on 13 May.

The Petition

Six CLAT 2018 aspirants have filed a petition stating that there were technical glitches such as power cut, failure to log-in, slow biometric verification, blank screens, server slow down, and other difficulties. Thus, as per the petition, the manner in which the CLAT 2018 was conducted “has jeopardized the future of thousands of students who appeared for this examination.”

A bench of justices U U Lalit and Deepak Gupta gave time till 15th June to the Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC) to look into the complaints and apply the normalization formula in order to compensate for the time lost during the exam due to technical faults. The committee is set up by the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi, the exam conducting authority for 2018.

During the arguments, lawyers representing the petitioners urged for quashing the CLAT 2018 on the ground of inconsistencies and technical glitches. They had also requested the bench to order a re-test on the basis of 5,700 complaints received by the GRC.

To this, the bench said, “Sorry, we are not with you on this (re-test)”. The bench further added, “Why should the students who have not taken any extra minute (in the exam) suffer in this uncertainty? What about those who have not given any complaints?"

"We accept that something went wrong (during the exam). Now, the issue is how to compensate this."

The bench would pass a formal order in this matter on 13 June.

Approximately 54,450 candidates had taken the CLAT 2018 exam conducted at 258 centres for admissions to 19 National Law colleges.