The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2020 has been postponed indefinitely for now, according to a notification by the committee, an early copy of which we have seen.
Update 21:30: Unlike the draft copy that we had published earlier, the official notification does not commit to announcing a new date by 1 September but literally postpones the CLAT indefinitely “until further notice”. While we understand that mid-September had been discussed in the meeting as a potential and tentative date, in light of the unpredictable and constantly developing Covid-19 situation and lockdowns, it seems reasonable that the consortium did not want to formally announce or commit to that.
As we had reported on Monday, the CLAT consortium’s committee of national law university (NLU) vice chancellors (VC) had held a meeting today to decide the fate of the 22 August test, against a backdrop of lockdowns in several states and a central government order prima facie preventing mass academic gatherings.
Several NLUs’ VCs, for instance, had expressed concerns about lockdowns in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, scheduled for the entire month, and several VCs we had spoken to over the past weeks had repeatedly stressed that the safety of candidates should come first.
The postponement will be a relief to those aspirants who may have had concerns about braving a physical exam centre in the midst of a pandemic.
On the other hand, some other candidates may have wanted to just get the exam, which they may have long prepared for, over with.
For the NLUs themselves, the delay will also be a major concern: most would have been hoping (Covid notwithstanding) to begin the new semester for freshers in early September 2020.
That is now all but impossible on the current roadmap.
Update 21:15: The official website and social media channels have now been updated with the announcement above, which is slightly different from the draft announcement we had published earlier.
Notably, it does not commit to announce any date in September anymore but actually postpones it indefinitely “until further notice”.
Update 23:40: The above notification seems to now have been removed from social media channels and the website of the CLAT. We will update this article when we hear anything.
Update 23:53: The website has been updated, noting that registrations have closed and that the exam has been “postponed until further notice”. Telegram and other social media channels have not yet been re-updated.
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Let's be honest, that's where Sudhir was during the meeting.
"Place others above you" is a mantra a law student should be prepared digest. If he cannot, its time he reconsidered his idea for being a lawyer.
It would have been much better if consortium would have given a date and ended any kind of ambiguity.
There is a reason why it went well. Because LSAC is a very old and reputed organisation. LSAT, GMAT, GRE, SAT, ACT are very seasoned tests conducted by world renowned testing organisations. They have just mastered it over half a century.
What I pity today is that the CLAT aspirants may lose an entire year. Unless CLAT decides to request LSAC to help them, there is no way an entrance exam of the kind the CLAT consortium wanted can happen. This is obstinancy of the highest order which NLUs could have avoided.
What is strange to me is that I don’t live in India and left India 3 decades ago and I worry that nothing much has changed in a large part. I wish NLUs had read this article that was published 75 days when the authors gave a road map for Indian legal education to follow during this pandemic:
www.livelaw.in/columns/why-indian-law-schools-need-to-adopt-the-online-law-entrance-exam-in-2020-the-re-imagination-of-the-law-school-admissions-process-156967
1)- LSAT is taken by 5-6k students. On the other hand more than 60k students write CLAT
2)- LSAT is taken by well to do students (considering that they are targeting OP Jindal). They can easily get the required infrastructure to take the test. In case of CLAT, students from all types of backgrounds appear for it and most of them can't afford a Laptop and a WiFi connection.
India is still captured in the shackles of poverty. We know the scenario better than you know. So, it would be better if you stop comparing the two exams, for the simple reason that they cannot be compared.
Views expressed are personal
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