HC directs provisional inclusion of TNNLS in CLAT 2014

Madras High Court bench here today ordered provisional inclusion of Tamil Nadu National Law School (TNNLS) in Srirangam for this year's Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), an All-India entrance examination for admissions to 14 national law universities (NLUs).
A bench comprising Justice V.Ramasubramanian and Justice V M Velumani said "Since the CLAT Committee is not a statutory body, but only a voluntary association of universities, an interim order is passed to provisionally include the TNNLS for CLAT 2014" (to be held on May 11).
The interim direction would subjected to the final out come of the writ petition, the Judges said.

CLAT is conducted on rotation by 14 of the 17 NLUs in the country for admission to their under-graduate and post-graduate degree programmes (LL.B & LL.M.).
Petitioner R Rajkumar, an advocate based in Tiruchirappalli near Srirangam, submitted that TNNLS, a state university, had submitted a proposal to become part of CLAT and wanted it to be included in the core committee of CLAT 2014.
He said creation of nodal agency to monitor the conduct of CLAT was necessary.

The Judges said "It appears that a Sub-Committee was constituted and it met on Jan 21, 2014 and framed criteria and guideline for admission of new members."

Though TNNLS had submitted a proposal to become part of CLAT, no physical inspection had been done. The CLAT committee convenor submitted that only after Physical verification and only after decision taken by the core committee, inclusion of TNNLS could be considered, they noted.
The Judges said the law universities in Vishakapattinam, Srirangam and Delhi were yet to become a part of CLAT. While NLS in Srirangam had applied for inclusion in CLAT, it was not known whether those at Delhi and Vishakapatnam had done so.
The CLAT Committee convenor submitted that only after physical verification and after decision taken by the core committee, the inclusion of TNNLS could be considered.

However, no physical inspection of the institute had been done.