CLAT 2018-Allotment Of Seats Shall Be Subject To Outcome Of Petitions [Read Order]

A vacation bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Ashok Bhushan on Wednesday clarified that the seat allotment for admissions to National Law Schools shall be contingent on the final disposal of the petitions challenging CLAT-2018 on the grounds of technical glitches and gross mismanagement.

The Grievance Redressal Committee, constituted by NUALS, Kochi to examine on a case-to-case basis the complaints of the numerous candidates, submitted its report before the bench.

The bench directed a copy of the report to be shared with the aggrieved candidates, listing the matter for further hearing on Monday.

At the previous hearing, the bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Mohan M. Shantanagoudar had refused to stay the publication of the results of CLAT-2018 as per schedule.

When Senior Counsel V. Giri, representing NUALS, had cited the manifold increase in the number of representations post the intervention of the apex court, the bench had contemplated the exclusion of complaints that are not genuine, “Why do thousands of representations have to be looked into? There has been an instance where 1,048 complaints have been received in the name of the same candidates...such repeat mails may not be entertained”.

The committee, headed by former Kerala High Court judge Justice Hariharan Nair, was constituted after a suggestion of the earlier vacation bench of Justices A. M. Khanwilkar and Navin Sinha.

The innumerable hindrances the candidates were faced with include inter alia

(a) Blank Screens while attempting the questions, for almost 10 minutes after commencement of examination;
(b) Regular hanging/disruption of computer systems provided to the Petitioners;
(c) Electricity cut and Power Failures at several centers across India;
(d) Problems in bio-metric verification of candidates.
(e) Test timers continuing to run inspite of hanging of /crashing of computer systems;
(f) Absence of a uniform protocol to deal with the allotment of time, or extension of time in case of electric failure, or technical failure of the software, or any other alternative arrangement to make up for the valuable time lost;
(g) Non – adherence to the instructions contained in the Admission Card and non-observance of pre – testing of the computer systems to obviate any technical glitches during the conduct of the examination; and
(h) No specific seats were allotted to the Petitioners and the Petitioners were made to sit on random computer systems which were presumed to be working properly as per the Respondents

The High Courts of Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Punjab & Haryana, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have also been approached of similar matters, but the Supreme Court had stayed the proceedings before them, requiring the aforesaid committee to advance recommendations in respect of the same.