ABVP, law students move HC challenging CLAT-2018

The Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and two law students today approached the Delhi High Court challenging the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) held recently and seeking direction to appoint an independent body for conducting the examination afresh.

The plea sought quashing of the CLAT-2018, claiming mismanagement and incompetency of the national law universities in conducting the examination on a rotational basis.

The petition, filed through advocate Namit Saxena, sought the court's intervention against the "inconsistent, negligent, sub-standard and inefficient implementation" of CLAT which was held by its working committee, implementation committee and the National University of Advanced Legal Studies on May 13.

The exam is conducted for the purpose of admission to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in law offered at premier national law schools of the country.

Besides ABVP, the two petitioners are Vibhav Chandra and Mangesh Mani, who had appeared for the exam and faced problems, including technical glitches.

The petition said there had been repeated failures and technical glitches every year in the conduct of CLAT and students were currently facing a threat to their career due to failure of the authorities.

"This year's CLAT (2018) examination has been worst of all the CLAT examinations held till date. From glitches which started right from the application process till the stage when the students, as some places, were not given or allowed the assigned time to complete their examination," it alleged.

It challenged the way of rotational conduct of CLAT examination and sought to constitute an autonomous body to conduct such prestigious examination.

The petitioners also challenged "arbitrary and unprofessional conduct" of such national law universities.

It alleged that there was violation of fundamental rights of the appearing candidates for fair examination and sought a thorough inquiry into the way the examination was conducted.

The plea further sought a direction to the central government through the Ministry of Law and Justice or the Ministry of Human Resource Development or any other autonomous organisation such as UPSC or SSC or BCI or CBSE to take over the conduction of CLAT.

As an interim measure, it sought a stay on all further proceedings in CLAT, 2018, including declaration of result. It also prayed for restraining the CLAT committee for this year from tampering with any evidence of reported or unreported mismanagement.