SC declines to cancel CLAT-2020 , Asks Petitioners to Submit Grievances to Committee
The Supreme Court on Friday granted the CLAT 2020 candidates the freedom to represent themselves before the Grievance Redressal Committee, which is headed by the retired Chief Justice of India, about complaints related to the conduct of the examination.
The five candidates who were demanding cancellation of the examination alleging technical glitches, the Supreme Court said that they can submit their complaints to the Redressal Committee within two days. Grievance Redressal Committee will consider the issues of the petitioners.
CLAT is a centralized national level entrance examination for admission to 23 National Law Universities in India. This examination was held on 28 September.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and MR Shah was informed by Senior Counsel PS Narasimha that there is a Grievance Redressal Committee headed by the former Chief Justice of India to consider the issues of the petitioners.
The bench said in its order, the petitioners will present complaints within two days from today and the Grievance Redressal Committee will take a decision on the complaints.
The bench told senior advocate Gopal Shankaranarayanan appearing on behalf of the petitioners, “We cannot stop counseling.”
Sankaranarayanan told the bench that there were technical glitches in the examination, which were conducted online and some questions were not right in it. He claimed that the software also did not record some answers correctly. He claimed,
“In lot of questions, wrong model answers were given. Out of 40,000 objections, 20,000 were on questions and answers. I am on the other 20,000. The cut-off in this exam is not even 0, but -4. This is not only in this exam but in the history of any exam. This list has students who have got marks as -4. These students have been called for counselling.”
The NLU consortium has no response to the nearly 19,000 objections, with Sankaranarayanan saying it is a software flaw that has been caused by a situation that has never happened before.
By Priya Kumari