In the latest hearing on the CLAT 2015 case, the High Court of Bombay on 25 June asked the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) convenor to seek clarification from its expert committee on the objections raised by the petitioner regarding 7 questions in the UG exam. The court has refused to grant any interim relief, setting the next date for hearing as 30 June 2015.
Senior counsel Kevic Setalvad, arguing for the petitioner Shubham Dutt, went into details regarding the seven questions that they contend to be wrong, questioning the CLAT’s expert committee’s finding that only two answers in the answer key were incorrect, reported Bar & Bench, saying: “Mistakes can be made, but to support the indefensible is appalling.”
On one question, even the opposing counsel reportedly conceded that an additional answer was most likely incorrect, while Setalvad pointed two questions copied from the 1996 and 1999 NLSIU Bangalore entrance exams wrongly and question 25 regarding antonym word pairs.
However, the CLAT convener’s counsel, senior counsel Ravi Kadam contended that these objections should have been raised earlier, and also submitted to the court the current findings and recommendations of the expert committee.
In its order the court noted that before considering passing any orders regarding the allotment lists or admission procedure, it would like to ascertain the final position on the correctness of the seven contested questions:
We are of the view that, at this stage, for passing any further orders, it is desirable that the concerned respondents should get the clarification from the Expert Committee referring to the objections so raised by the petitioner.
The court also highlighted the fact that if indeed these seven questions were found to be incorrect, it would have implications for the overall merit list which could not be ignored.
Importance of additions or deductions of marks can not be overlooked in any competitive examinations. Here as stated, there are 7 such answers, which may affect the merit of the petitioner or such other students.
The next date of hearing at the Bombay high court is 30th June, when the CLAT convener’s advocate is expected to submit the Expert Committee’s response regarding the seven contested questions.
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My son was in SLS, Pune and got through to GNLU in this year's CLAT, he has already got a provisional admission in GNLU (he needs to submit Migration Certificate from Symbiosis). In light of the above noted development, should I continue with the cancellation at Symbiosis?
If he doesn't cancel the admission before 1st July, we will have to pay for the second year. Please advise me as soon as you can.
Correct - they might note that certain questions were wrong and pass directions for the future conduct of CLAT. However, traditionally at no point has a court scrapped an exam or asked to re-jig the rank list after admission process is over.
I am sure the court in this case would have been made aware of the admission dates by the concerned advocates. Had the bench wished to do anything they could and would have stayed the process. The fact they have decided not to it is very likely to assume that they'll follow the large amount of precedents set by our judiciary in related matters.
If they wished to not go further with the stay, then there would be no point to find out the correct answers appointing the Expert committee. Traditionally, not many competitive exams go further with the admission process when there are these many errors. One or two, though significant wouldn't do much difference. But seven or more than seven answers would make a lot of difference. That's what the order highlighted.Now to protect the interests of students who are almost done done with admission process(around 1200), injustice can't be done to rest of the 35,000.
This is the way an ordinary, rational man thinks. You wait and watch my friend - our judges are neither 'ordinary' nor very 'rational'.
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