CLAT 2025 : Delhi High Court Finds Two Answers 'Demonstrably Wrong', Directs To Revise Results Of Petitioner
The Delhi High Court has held that the law does not commend a total 'hands off' approach for Courts where the answer key is demonstrably wrong, underscoring that injustice caused to a candidate must be undone.
Justice Jyoti Singh observed that there is no absolute proscription against a Court examining a challenge to the answer key in an examination process, even if there is an expert opinion before the Court.
“Therefore, the law does not commend a total 'hands off' approach and in exceptional cases where questions are found to be demonstrably wrong, the resultant injustice to a candidate must be redressed and undone,” the Court said.
Justice Singh partly allowed a plea seeking quashing of the final answer key published for CLAT-UG 2025 examination conducted on December 01.
The petition was moved by a candidate who appeared in the examination and specifically challenged answers to five questions.
The Court found errors in two questions to be demonstrably clear and said that shutting a blind eye to the same would be injustice to the petitioner and that it may impact the result of other candidates.
“Accordingly, it is directed that the result of the Petitioner will be revised to award marks to him for Question No.14 in accordance with the scheme of marking. Since Court has upheld option 'C' as the correct answer, which was also the view of the Expert Committee, benefit cannot be restricted only to the Petitioner and will extend to all candidates who have opted for option 'C',” the Court said.
It added: “Question No.100 will be excluded as correctly advised by the Expert Committee and the result will be accordingly revised.”
The plea was opposed by Consortium of NLUs, stating that an expert committee was constituted by the Consortium which has duly considered all objections received from various candidates before finalising the answer key.
The Consortium had said that it has adopted a rigorous internal process before finalising and publishing the Final Answer Key on December 07 and that such process gave adequate opportunity to all candidates, including the Petitioner, to raise their objections to the Provisional Answer Key.
Counsel for Petitioner: Mr. Dhanesh Relan, Mr. Arjeet Gaur, Mr. Barinda Batra, Mr. Atul Kanti Tripathi, Mr. Suryansh Jamwal and Mr. Sachin Sharma, Advocates
Counsel for Respondent: Mr. Sandeep Sethi, Senior Advocate with Mr. Arun Srikumar, Mr. A. K. Trivedi, Mr. Ram Shankar, Mr. Yash Jagra, Mr. Shubhansh Thakur and Ms. Shreya Sethi, Advocates
Title: ADITYA SINGH (MINOR) v. CONSORTIUM OF NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITIES