Breaking: CLAT 2018-SC Directs NUALS To Compensate With Additional Marks To Students Who Lost Time As Recommended By Redressal Committee [Read Order]

The Supreme Court vacation bench of Justices U. U. Lalit and Deepak Gupta on Wednesday passed a string of directions on the pleas challenging CLAT-2018 on the grounds of mismanagement and technical glitches.

The Bench has directed NUALS to compensate with additional marks to students who lost time due to the technical glitches as identified by the Grievance Redressal Committee. The Bench also directed that to publish the revised list in the website by June-16

Directions

A).The exercise of applying normalization formula as suggested by Mr. V. Giri, learned Senior Advocate and revising the scores of 4690 candidates shall be completed by 15.06.2018. Respondent Nos.2 and 3 namely the National University of Advance Legal Studies, Kochi and Core Committee-Common Law Admission Test 2018 through its Convenor –Vice Chancellor, National University of Advance Legal Studies, Kochi shall undertake the entire exercise and complete it by 15.06.2018.

B). Upon completion of said exercise, the revised scores of 4690 candidates will be published by respondents 2 and 3 on the official website on 16.06.2018.

C). Based on such revised scores the merit list will be rearranged in terms of Para 3 of the suggestion given by the Committee. In other words, the revised position of the concerned candidate will be indicated by rank Nos.51A-51B as illustrated by the Committee.

D). The first round of counseling which began on 10.06.2018 shall go on without any impediment and if any candidate is allocated a seat, such allocation will not in any way stand adversely altered as a result of revised position granted to any of the candidates from the body of 4690 candidates.

E). If any candidate from the body of 4690 candidates is otherwise entitled, that is to say even without the benefit of revised score, to be allocated any seat, it goes without saying that such allocation will not in any way stand adversely affected.

F). In the second round of counseling the rank/merit list so prepared in terms of these directions shall be the governing list and the seats in second and subsequent rounds of counseling will be allocated on the basis of the list so revised in pursuance of these directions. 17

G). If a candidate, as a result of revised rank list being operative in second and subsequent round of counseling wants to secure admission in any other college of his or her choice going by his or her revised ranking, he/she shall be allowed to do so without incurring any disadvantage. In such cases, the fees if deposited in the first college shall be given due credit against the admission in the second college which the candidate may opt for as a result of revised ranking.

On Monday, Senior Counsel V. Giri, appearing on behalf of NUALS, had thrown light on the compensatory formula devised for the benefit of the candidates aggrieved of loss of time- “we have applied the formula suggested by a team of statisticians in respect of candidates in whose case the GRC noted a deficiency based on the audit reports...for instance, in the case of writ petitioner Animesh Shukla, the exam was taken in 7000 seconds and the notional time loss as per the audit report is 538 seconds. The total number of questions attempted is 172, the number of questions answered correctly is 125 and the score is 113. Based on the answering efficiency so derived, projections have been made as to the number of questions that could have been attempted and those that may have been correctly or wrongly answered and the score has been revised...”

“So you are calculating the time taken to answer one question based on how many questions were attempted in the total time taken...then you are going as per the normative capacity to answer correctly as well as the inadequacy of answering wrongly to award compensatory marks...”, repeated the bench, allowing the GRC to proceed with the administration of the formula.

Mr. Giri had also said suggested a system of supernumerary ranks upon such enhancement of scores- “suppose a student with rank 115 gets admitted to NLU, Jodhpur. Upon revision of marks, certain other candidates may also acquire ranks 115A, 115B, 115C and so on...to avoid any heartburn, Your Lordships’ orders will be needed to create the additional seats as there is no statutory provision in this regard...”

“We will not resort to this unless we are driven to...say, NLSUI, Bangalore admits 60-80 students and after the first counselling, 5 seats remain, then the second merit list shall proceed normally, there being no displacement...”, observed the bench.

The bench had also rejected pleas for a reexamination.