CLAT Consortium decided to conduct its 2021 exam offline via a notification last December; this was while we were preparing ourselves to juggle our lives for another year amidst a pandemic. For CLAT organisers, the dismissal of the petition filed in the apex court against the conduct of the offline exam came as a relief at the last moment. Against all odds, the CLAT Exam...
CLAT Consortium decided to conduct its 2021 exam offline via a notification last December; this was while we were preparing ourselves to juggle our lives for another year amidst a pandemic. For CLAT organisers, the dismissal of the petition filed in the apex court against the conduct of the offline exam came as a relief at the last moment. Against all odds, the CLAT Exam was conducted successfully on the revised date of 23rd July, 2021 across centres all over India. As per unofficial reports, approximately 50,000 students appeared for the exam, competing against each other for over two thousand seats available in 22 NLUs across the country.
GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE PAPER
CLAT exam, this year, was surprisingly easy-moderate in terms of difficulty level. It was a predictable paper with straightforward questions and a comparatively less number of indirect/twisted problems. There were not many surprises this year, though it proved to be less lengthy than the 2020 CLAT pattern. Covid-19 questions were frequent across the paper as expected. Although, to our surprise, most of the sections were on the easier side of the gradient scale. The weightage for each section was fairly similar to that of previous year's exam, with Current Affairs and Legal Reasoning tallying up for 50% of the total marks.
DETAILED PAPER ANALYSIS
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
This section was much easier than last year's paper. It had 30 questions, which were mostly direct. Arguably, it was the easiest section of the paper even though it was lengthy. The English section consisted of 6 Reading Comprehensions out of which 5 were from the non-fiction category. Passages were moderately difficult, though few questions ended up becoming a little confusing for the CLAT aspirants.
One passage was on the difficult side, although the succeeding questions were generally easy. Some of the passages were based on the realms of school and education and COVID-19, while another one was an abstract from the famous short story- 'A Scandal in Bohemia.'
CURRENT AFFAIRS
This section was somewhere between the easy to moderate grade scale, barring a few odd questions. This section had 35 questions in whole. They were predictable and typical in nature, mostly based on UN, SAARC, Line of Actual Control, Government initiatives, Clean Ganga Mission, PM Modi's Bangladesh visit, etc. The options were very close in a few questions w.r.t dates given, which made it a little confusing for the candidates. A few objections have been raised regarding the veracity of those similar options.
LEGAL REASONING
This section was lengthy as expected by most of the CLAT takers. However, the section was easier than last year when examined in its entirety. There were 40 questions purely static in nature. The passages were based on the core legal concepts taken from statutes themselves, albeit technical. Passages were predominantly based on Hindu Marriage Act, Law of Tort, IPC, Indian Contract Act, Res Judicata, etc.
Surprisingly, there were no current legal knowledge questions asked. It will be safe to say that most of them were theory based conceptual questions. "No prior legal knowledge required" didn't hold entirely good this time for the CLAT aspirants.
LOGICAL REASONING
This section was easy-moderate in the difficulty level. A highlight of this section was the unusual lack of analytical reasoning questions. All 30 questions were based on the concepts of Critical Reasoning; there were many inference based questions among them as well. There was an extremely lengthy one among the passages, and three other passages that were based on the Covid-19 pandemic. This section was a bit tricky but undoubtedly much easier than the Logical reasoning section of last year.
QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUES
This section fares as one of the two easiest sections in the question paper this year, along with the equally placed English section. This time, only paragraph-explanatory questions were asked with close to nil graphs/charts. There were 3 caselets with 5 questions each, which demanded minimal calculations. Most questions were based on the standard mathematical concepts of percentages, ratios and proportion.
A few answers in this section, when correctly calculated couldn't be found among any of the options given. These seemed like a few inadvertent mistakes that crept up in the question paper itself.
WHAT NEXT?
CLAT released the answer key on 23.07.2021 and invited objections until 9 PM on 24.07.2021. Each objection has been charged a hefty sum of Rs. 1000/-.with the clause that the amount will be refunded if the objection is found to be valid. This move from the CLAT organisers has raised many eyebrows, making it difficult for students to raise objections. CLAT has already released the calendar, based on which final answer key would be released on 27th July. The calendar also denotes the publishing date of the Consolidated Merit List on 28th July. The counselling process would start the next day itself, i.e., on 29th July.
As of now, students can hopefully keep their minds off everything CLAT –related and concentrate on their upcoming exams like AILET and MH-CET.