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Or am I reading things wrong? I know the counselling registration fees are refundable, but there's nothing about the confirmation fees in the refunds section. It says instead the confirmation fees are to be forfeited if a candidate chooses to exit counselling in the later rounds.How does that make sense?

I'm mainly preparing for JEE. I can't make a decision now on whether I'd even be going to the NLU I'm getting. Wasn't the whole point of CLAT being conducted in Dec to avoid a clash with other competitive exams? Or was it just supposed to get money out of students who haven't fully committed to pursuing a career in law?

Please tell me I lack basic reading comprehension and the CLAT counselling procedure isn't just a cash grab.
There will be litigation if forfeiture happens. The Consortium will get thrashed in the court as usual. Then they will refund anyway.
From what I have seen on online forums, there are many like me who took CLAT without focusing on it and did well, but all of them are opting not to register for counselling. I doubt there will be many people taking CONNLU to court. And even if they do, didn't the Supreme Court criticise the Consortium for overpricing CLAT? What came of it? I'm not a lawyer, but I can't see why they will be forced to refund the fees if they stated the confirmation fees were non-refundable in the Information Bulletin.
There is an UGC regulation. It requires the universities to refund 90% of the fees even if a student withdraws within the first semester.
Wait, really? Lmao. Just checked - if I withdraw from counselling in May it's apparently possible to get a full refund.

Thanks for this. No point in not going through with counselling then, at least for the second round. Not sure if a lawyer's fees won't eat up the refund, but I guess I should keep my options open when there are UGC regulations in my favor.
It is an explicit cash grab. If a candidate who is allotted a seat and confirms the same through freeze or higher preference allotment through float and then exits at some point (university fee payment for first two rounds is mentioned sometime in May), the confirmation fee will not be refunded.
You're probably right. It's hilarious that they chose to go to such lengths to assure the counselling registration fee would be refunded. Why do that when they want to hardball candidates who want to keep their choices open? Why even conduct CLAT in December? Instead, repeated assurances in the refunds section about the counselling registration fees being refundable, only to mention once that the confirmation fees would not be refunded, lulling candidates into a false sense of security. Masterful.
I was unable to pay fee in prescribed time due to some financial issues. Now they'are not refunding my confirmation fee, citing it's not refundable. They are forfeiting whole 20,000. I'm not in state to bear legal cost. Please suggest what to do now and if any PIL or any case going on in the similar matter.
Send a legal notice to Sudhir. He's responsible for any forfeiture. Cite the UGC rule in the notice.
Sudhir would be the NLS Bangalore VC, yeah? Does he hold some post in the Consortium of NLUs that makes him personally responsible for a refusal to refund fees?

They haven't responded so far about the UGC guidelines. Should I hire a lawyer to draft and send the legal notice on my behalf?
I am in the same boat. Got the same tripe about confirmation fees being non-refundable. Pointed to the UGC regulations, crickets from them so far.

Not sure how to proceed from here.
No. About to file a complaint to the UGC. Should I send a legal notice to CONNLU? Can someone more experienced weigh in on this?
Yes, you can. File a complaint to the UGC and also copy the individual VCs in it. Tag the places in your social media handles too, as well as the current UGC chairperson, who is quite active on Linkedin and X. That often sees quick actions from the people involved.
Thanks for responding. I will do that. One question, though: copy the individual VCs, as in send the complaint to the email addresses of the NLU VCs?