Supreme Court To Pass Guidelines To Ensure Access To CLAT For Candidates With Disabilities

The Supreme Court on Friday stated that it would pass guidelines to ensure better accessibility for candidates with disability to appear in CLAT examination. The comment was made in a plea challenging the stringent conditions imposed by CLAT consortium on persons with disabilities intending to avail scribes. The matter was listed before CJI DY Chandrachud, Justice PS Narasimha, and Justice JB Pardiwala.

In the last hearing, CJI DY Chandrachud had remarked that the consortium only providing scribes to those with benchmark disabilities was, in the court's opinion, against the judgement in Vikash Kumar v. Union Public Service Commission. The bench had, while stating that no deserving student shall be stopped from getting scribe, asked the petitioner to give the consortium the list of 13 specially-abled students appearing for CLAT 2023 so that the consortium could ensure that they were reasonably accommodated.

Today, the petitioner informed the court that the said 13 students had all received scribes and were able to appear in the exam successfully. He also mentioned that some of the students had even been admitted to law schools.

CJI DY Chandrachud remarked–

"For future, we'll issue some guidelines. We'll keep it after Holi now. We'll keep it in the third week of March."

In the last hearing too, the bench had stated that the issue would be examined again after this year's CLAT examination is held. 

Case Title: Arnab Roy v. Consortium of NLU And Anr. WP(C) No. 1109/2022

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