A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court by few law aspirants to quash the exam and for a direction to the Consortium to re-conduct the CLAT exam due to alleged technical glitches during the exam held on September 28.
Apart from a prayer for the conduct of a fresh round of CLAT 2020, the petitioners also seek a direction for the Consortium to ensure that technical difficulties do not recur in the re-exam.
The petition has been filed through Advocate Ankita Choudhary.
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Contentions
The petition stated results declared by the Consortium are “wrong, erroneous, and incorrect” and, as such, “biased”. The petition lists various issues faced by the aspirants in the online entrance exam:
- The candidates have chosen/selected/ticked correct answers; however, it is reflecting in a result that us wrong and/or 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, in the results, different answers are shown as chosen/selected/ticked.
- 10 questions are either wrong themselves, or their answers which are uploaded on website are wrong.
This, the petition claims was an “arrogant” move by the Consortium. The petition says,
“…neither grievance committee nor the consortium looked into the issues of objections / grievances filed by the petitioners / aspirants in large numbers, however, dealt the same with biased approach in very arrogant way vide their press release dated 03.10.2020.”
Moreover, an objection has also been raised to the length of the exam, which is stated to have had about 18,600 words to be read in the 120-minute time span permitted to anwser the exam. The petitioners add that this posed a disadvantage from students from non-English medium backgrounds as well.
“It is unfortunate that the CLAT Consortium has designed the question paper for, CLAT 2020? in a way that ensures systematic exclusion of students hailing from non-English speaking backgrounds“, the petitioners contend.
Prayer
The petitioners, therefore, pray for the CLAT 2020 to be declared violative of Articles 14 and 15 and for a fresh round of the exam to be held, without the technical glitches that the first round allegedly faced.
