As the Supreme Court is about to begin hearing the challenge by petitioners in the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) shortly, the CLAT Consortium has just uploaded the first provisional seat allotments, following its counselling process.

Note: Latest updates, including the latest CLAT press release, are set out below.

The first lists for each university are available here, or, rather than clicking to download each PDF:

• we have combined the undergraduate PDFs into one handy PDF here, and
• the postgraduate seat allocation PDFs here.

We will be updating this post here live when there are updates.

11:56: Senior Gopal Sankaranarayanan for the petitioners: says 40,000 objections have been received, 21,000 were on questions and answers. The remainder of complaints and what exactly they concerned is unknown.

He is saying that cut-offs as low as -3 points, had “never happened before” in any exam in India.

These are “fatal software defects”, he said.

11:58: Sankaranarayanan now is pointing out the lowest scores of candidates invited to counselling, with scores such as -4.

12:00: Returning to an earlier point, he is continuing pointing out several questions that had obviously wrong answers. Earlier he had claimed that there were 20 errors in the answer key, which had not been addressed.

12:02: Counsel for CLAT, senior advocate PS Narasimha: Much of it is on the basis of misconception they have.

The expert committee has answered everything in detail, he says.

Regarding the very low scores who had been called to counselling, are purely scheduled tribe and scheduled caste candidates, who would not have made it to an actual university.

“We called everyone, he says.”

There was no criteria for minimum marks to get called for counselling, confirms the CLAT’s lawyer.

12:05: Counsel for CLAT is setting out several examples of candidates whose complaints made on social media, were not corroborated and “fraudulent” and “manipulated” documents had been shared, which did not check out.

12:07: As far as software glitches are concerned, this is an extraordinary situation. The CLAT had submitted an affidavit that the complaints are not correct.

Now raising the point regarding objections in the CLAT were free, unlike in other exams.

12:10: Narasimha says: You can see the background in which it happened (in oblique reference to the National Law Aptitude Test (NLAT)), there can not be any doubt about this one.

12:11: Somebody had filed a document before you by forging the marks they have got. His affidavit is not file. At page 3, the affidavit says. Somebody must take responsibility. The advocate for petition has received a lot of responses.

For example, has scored 150 marks, according to the original list, has scored only 1 mark.

The advocate has filed it on what basis?

12:13: Sankaranarayanan for petitioners: These people are completely incompetent in this exam and should be taken over by NTA.

He objects to the personal attacks made by Narasimha against the petitioner.

There are 20,000 objections [technical]. Their only answer is that the same organisation runs JEE or AIIMS. We don’t have a problem with JEE or AIIMS.

And they don’t reply to it.

9 or 10 other questions that are wrong have not addressed.

12:16: Sankaranarayanan says: They shouldn’t make it a fait accompli by finishing admissions.

12:16: The court: We are not inclined to pass any interim order, says the court.

Narasimha reminds the court that the court had ordered in the NLAT case that admissions should conclude by mid-October.

Sankaranarayanan says that their Lordships couldn’t have foreseen that the CLAT would be carried out so badly.

12:20: The judges noted that aggrieved candidates should send their grievances to the CLAT committee within two days, which should decide immediately thereafter.

Hearing over.

19:08: The order is out (click here for PDF) and concludes that only the petitioners can submit their grievances:

In the facts of the present case, we are of the view that ends of justice be served in giving liberty to the petitioners to submit a representation to the Grievance Redressal Committee with regard to their grievance within three days from today. We order accordingly. We have no doubt that the petitioners’ representation be considered by the Committee at an early date.

Press release from CLAT post hearing

Update 18:48: The CLAT has made the following press release with more details about the process.

It has also confirmed, for the first time, that “4839 candidates had filed objections”, adding that “thus huge majority (54,604 candidates) did not file any objection”.

The CLAT has not confirmed whether those 4,839 candidates had filed objections regarding mistakes in the answer key or whether those were exclusively objections over potential technical issues.

The process of Admission to participating National Law Universities of Consortium of National Law Universities has begun today. We had invited 14,992 for UG and 4,081 for PG candidates for the Counselling. Out of 14,992 candidates called for counselling, only 8,227 for UG and 2,166 for PG paid the counselling fee and are now eligible for admission in order of merit. Many candidates who did not have the realistic chance to get into any National Law University or the University of their choice did not pay the counselling fee. Those who do not get seat will get full refund of their counselling fee.

The Consortium had called five times candidates of total seats available for UG (2,596 seats) and PG (783 seats) for counselling. To ensure timely admission of the candidates who have appeared for CLAT – 2020, all the candidates in the Reserved Categories were called for counselling and that is why some candidates even with negative marks were also invited. These candidates are not likely to get any seat. In any case those who have paid the counselling fee alone can be given seats in order of merit and therefore candidates with negative marks are unlikely to get seats. CLAT-2020 does not have any minimum marks and therefore calling of these candidates cannot be faulted. By 5.30 p.m., as many as 2,786 candidates have been admitted to various National Law Universities out of the 1st allotment list released by the Consortium today.

Supreme Court today heard the petition against the CLAT-2020. We feel fully satisfied with the order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court as the Court neither ordered retest of CLAT-2020 nor given any stay to the admission process. Accepting Consortium’s argument, the Court has given petitioners liberty to file any complaint, if any, before the Grievance Committee which is headed by the Hon’ble Justice S. Rajendra Babu, Former Chief Justice of India. Consortium had already notified the Grievance Committee on its website.

CLAT-2020 was a student friendly entrance test. We had given sample papers and conducted 5 Mock Tests on the same platform with same instructions. Total words in CLAT-2020 were far less than the sample papers. Our Service Provider has conducted test of 1.4 crore candidates in 2020. All the leading tests like JEE, NEET, GATE(IIT’s), AIIMS, Public Service Commission Recruitment Examinations and Banking Exams were conducted by the same service provider. Even NTA used his services. Thus, even if NTA had conducted CLAT, in all likelihood same service provider with same software and platform would have conducted the test.

We had invited objections to the Questions, Key and technical issues to the CLAT-2020. All objections were referred to a 13-member Expert Committee headed by a Retired Judge of the High Court. Accepting many objections, three questions were dropped and Key was modified in respect of four questions. In all only 4839 candidates had filed objections and thus huge majority (54,604 candidates) did not file any objection.

Diversity in National Law Universities has been an issue but this year large number of candidates from rural areas and underprivileged backgrounds have also been selected. In fact out of 200 ST candidates coached by the ST Welfare Department, Government of Madhya Pradesh, as many as 104 were selected for the counselling. Government of Madhya Pradesh has agreed to fully fund the education of these candidates. Several candidates from small towns also got selected. Strangely on the one hand petitioner’s in the Supreme Court favoured diversity and on the other opposed calling of underprivileged candidates with low scores for the counselling.

We found no discrepancy in any response sheet between the responses made by the candidates and those reflected in the response sheets. The audit trail in all cases examined by us matched with the response sheet.

(FAIZAN MUSTAFA)