Many cases have been filed in various High Courts due to controversy in conduct of national law entrance exam.
What is CLAT?
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is the biggest and most important of all law entrance examinations in India.
It is conducted by India’s 19 National Law Universities by rotation, in the order of their dates of establishment.
CLAT was organised for the first time in 2008 which enabled more than 40,000 candidates to take exams and get enrolled in law institutions every year after their Class XII exam.
It is an online exam which covers a wide range of topics including general knowledge and current affairs, numerical ability, legal aptitude, and logical reasoning for 200 marks in 120 minutes.
This year, the organising university was the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi.
What is the controversy about?
The candidates appearing for the CLAT this year faced many challenges in completing the exam successfully due to technical glitches and mismanagement.
Mismanagement was on part of the organising university NUALS, hence majority of the candidates were affected and now have lesser chances of clearing the exam with good scores.
Many cases have been filed in various High Courts as these issues would be directly upsetting the candidates’ careers.
What were the issues faced by the candidates?
There was technical error in the computers, which increased the time taken to navigate between questions.
Many of the students dint receive computers which weren’t functioning properly and that was the case with almost all computers in many centres.
Some students complained that they had to keep entering passwords for every answer and this reduced the time which they had to answer other questions.
Air conditioners weren’t functioning in many centres which affected the servers which had to hold the load of so many computers.
Even signing attendance sheets caused much trouble, as students were interrupted between exams to fill the sheets.
There were no invigilators in some labs to oversee such issues as and when they arise.
