New Delhi: The Supreme Court on May 30 ruled out cancelling the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2018 because of several technical glitches that had appeared during the course of examination. Instead, the apex court asked the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS) to declare the result on May 31 as scheduled.
Even as the court ruling is expected to bring relief to many students, it doesn’t address the root of the problem that has been plaguing CLAT procedures and facilities for years.
Let’s consider the most recent examination in this context. On May 13, 2018, NUALS Kochi conducted CLAT for 54,000 plus candidates. However, the examination, according to the examinees, was riddled with irregularities, which reignited the debate around NUALS and the inefficient selection method. As in previous years, within two weeks of this year’s examination, several petitions were filed against CLAT in various high courts. Six CLAT candidates even petitioned the Supreme Court, seeking to quash the examination and organise a retest.
According to Livelaw, in response to the petition, the Supreme Court on May 25, directed the respondent i.e. NUALS Kochi, to set up a nodal agency to examine the grievances of candidates and offer redressal. NUALS Kochi has complied with the court directive by setting up a CLAT 2018 Grievance Redressal Committee.
Here is what the CLAT Website says:
“In compliance with the orders of the Hon’ble Supreme Court dated 25.05.2018, in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 551/2018, it is hereby notified that candidates may send their representations relating to CLAT 2018 to representations@clat.ac.in Candidates have to mention their Roll Nos., Programme, Name and Mobile No. in their representation. It may be noted that mails received upto 7.00 p.m. on Sunday, 27th May, 2018 would be under consideration.”
The Grievance Redressal Committee has been asked to look into all the registered complaints and submit a report by June 6, reported Bar & Bench.
However, it seems improbable that the grievance redressal committee could redeem the present CLAT system. To understand how deep-rooted the malaise is, we need to take stock of the range of problems besetting CLAT.
National law universities are supposed to be in the league of elite institutions like IITs and IIMs. They are projected to be the torch bearers of legal education in India. The CLAT – conducted at an all-India level, is ill-equipped to ensure such high academic standards. For many years, legal experts as well as law students have been voicing their criticism and anxieties about the system.
Prof Shamnad Basheer. Credit: Facebook/Zersey
In 2015, Prof Shamnad Basheer, a legal scholar, filed a petition in Supreme Court urging that a “robust, structured and institutionalised mechanism for conducting CLAT to avoid uncertainties and reduce the scope for errors and lapses” must be set up. Prof Basheer had contended in the petition that “despite the growing popularity of CLAT, its planning and execution over the years has been marred with serious institutional lapses and inefficiencies, such as arbitrary and sub-standard question papers, incorrect questions and answers, questions that have no reasonable nexus to a candidate’s aptitude for the study of law, wrongful allotments of seats, unnecessary delays and an opaque administration that fails to comply with basic standards of transparency and the norms underlying the RTI Act.”
The responsibility to conduct CLAT is delegated to one of the NLUs every year. The examination centre rotates from one NLU institution to another. So how did NUALS Kochi fulfill its responsibility this year? Regrettably, as examination convener, the Kochi institution failed to rise to the occasion. The entrance examination, conducted at hundreds of different centres across India on May 13, 2018, was marred by scores of technical and infrastructural glitches. Immediately after the examination, a number of students described their two hours in the examination hall as nothing but a nightmare. And the number of such complaints increased as the days went by.
Looking at the widespread dissatisfaction, Vensy Krishna, a student of NALSAR Hyderabad and founder of ‘Law School 101,’ decided to intervene by asking candidates to document the technical glitches they have faced in a Google Doc form. As per Legally India On May 16, 2018, the number of complaints reached 1,885, which is around 3% of the CLAT examinees.
Let’s consider some of the most common problems that were reported: computers hung on several occasions, questions first appeared in encrypted form and then suddenly switched to other machine languages, a click on the ‘next’ button advanced several steps ahead of the intended index. In addition, there was server failure and the biometric verification system could not fetch personal data. These technical glitches made the candidates lose 15 to 20 minutes of their crucial time.
Besides, the administration conducting CLAT also turned out to be inefficient and unprofessional. There was no technical assistance available, no power back up, no pen and paper to solve questions. Basic amenities like fans and drinking water were absent at some centres. While the administration was clearly clueless about how to resolve the crisis, some candidates discussed the paper inside the examination hall.
To understand the importance of losing 20 minutes of examination time, it is important to understand the format of the question paper. CLAT is a 200-mark question paper and each question contains one mark. It has 50 questions each for Legal Aptitude and General Knowledge, 40 each for Logical Reasoning and English and 20 for Math. Every candidate gets two hours to complete the paper which means, on an average 200 questions in 120 minutes, which leaves a candidate with merely 36 seconds to answer a question. Therefore, losing ten minutes could cost them a lot in terms of overall scoring.
Hence, many legal experts as well as students feel that the Supreme Court’s decision to set up a grievance redressal committee instead of organising a re-test is not an effective solution. CLAT 2018 has raised certain questions that the redressal committee may struggle to answer: How will the students be compensated for the lack of basic amenities which hindered their exam? What steps will be taken against the students who openly discussed the paper during the examination?
The only lesson that can be taken out of the CLAT 2018 fiasco is that the current CLAT administrative setup is inefficient and the real solution can only come through revamping it.