The original story was wrong as Legally India had relied on wrong information on a third party site. The number of law school aspirants in India has increased by 25 per cent against last year, with 30,000 test takers registered to sit for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2012 for LLB programmes, with nearly a month of sign-ups still to go.

“As of today, the number stands at 30,000 students for LLB and about 1000 students LLM. The last date for the applications is 31st March 2012, so the exact number will be available then,” NLU Jodhpur vice chancellor NN Mathur told website Gyan Central in an interview in his capacity as convenor of the CLAT 2012.

Correction: Gyan Central has amended its interview after publication, with Mathur’s quote now reading: “As of today, the number stands at 15,000 plus applications.The last date for the applications is 31st March 2012, so the exact number will be available then.” The error was brought to Legally India’s attention via this Facebook thread. We apologise to our readers and regret for relying on Gyan Central’s interview for the initially published erroneous information and should have verified the figure independently.

CLAT 2011 saw a record 23,875 aspirants compete for a total of 1075 seats in 11 national law schools offering admissions through the common entrance exam, which was an increase of almost 40 per cent on 2010’s figure of 17,300 applicants.

This year three new national law schools - NLU Cuttack in Orissa, NUSRL Ranchi and NLS JAA Guwahati - have been added to the official list of colleges that are formally part of the exam, as reported by Legally India last year.

The 2012 CLAT will take place on 13 May.

Mathur told Gyan Central that this year’s paper would not be very difficult, and an in-house method for avoiding errors and attaining accuracy was being devised.

Last year’s exam, convened by NUJS Kolkata, was much more difficult than the level of the mock exams, reported Legally India in 2011. The exam wasn’t free from controversy either, with up to five answers to questions underlined in some sets of papers.

For any errors in the question paper this year, Mathur advised the students to avoid panic during the exam and send him an email after the exam.

Picture by umjanedoan