NUJS professor Shamnad Basheer said: “There are a number of changes. For one, this year, CLAT has tied up with the Indian post office to distribute the forms much more widely. Last two to three years, it was only two to three banks per state (and mainly states having metro cities).
“This year, we’re distributing through all major post offices in every state – so that there is greater awareness and all sections of society have access to forms.”
“Further, no static GK questions will be asked (when did Humayun die?). Only current affairs questions (questions between April 2010 and April 2011) will be asked,” he added. “Thirdly, no legal knowledge will be tested. Only legal aptitude/legal reasoning will be tested. Which means students don't need to study legal principles before they write the exam—only their process of reasoning will be tested.”
The CLAT brochures and application forms would now sell for Rs 150 from post offices throughout India and at each of the eleven national law schools participating in the CLAT. Application fees will be Rs 2,500 and Rs 2,000 for scheduled castes and scheduled tribe (SC/ST) candidates, with an application deadline of 2 April 2011.
The exam will be held in May 2011 and full details are available on its new website.
Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) project
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Basheer was the architect of the IDIA project, which is training and preparing students from underprivileged backgrounds for the CLAT exam.
The project would pay the CLAT fees to IDIA scholars but Basheer said that IDIA would now also introduce a means-tested sponsorship potentially for all CLAT takers in need of assistance.
“We have … decided to sponsor the forms of all other CLAT aspirants who may not be able to afford it. We will of course do this only after verifying their financial capabilities,” explained Basheer.
IDIA is supported by a number of law schools and lawyers and law firms, including Trilegal, Krishnamurthy, Wadia Ghandy.
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I guess there is another case which is needed to be filed in a HC, to integrate NLU-D and NLU-O in the Clat exam.
I am very happy to read the article about CLAT 2011, Steps taken in this regard is very good, and hope students will sure get benefit from these changes.
regards
Ambrish Tandon
(Advocate)
Kanpur
9839533673
9336110518
The reduction is fees is admirable and will go a long way in bringing good legal education closer to students from poor income families though the fee structure would make a money-lender blush with NLU Jodhpur charging as much (if not more) than many engineering and medical colleges (but perhaps that is due to their disproportionate focus on core science over law).
The omission of requirement to select preferences at the time of application is well thought change. Many candidates have in the past made poor choices in their preferences (no doubt influenced by equally poor rankings such as Outlook and India Today) and regretted it later. Now selection of institution will happen only after results are declared - which allows candidates to conduct some serious research in these five months.
I hope the pattern of questions is also revised to include more logical reasoning and legal aptitude and less 'GK' style questions.
Perhaps in coming years, the different reservations in all these institutions could be made uniform instead of what we have now - with NLIU Bhpoal reserving half its intake for the natives and NALSAR doing the same for women.
This only goes to show how much the CLAT is affected by the institution conducting it and underlines the need for a more permanent setup so that mistakes are not repeated and experience put to use.
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