The Common Law Admissions Test (CLAT) fiasco is getting murkier by the day. A second writ petition filed by sixteen year old law aspirant Tanaya Thakur, seeking to cancel CLAT 2012, was heard in the Allahabad high court yesterday.
The class XII student through her mother Dr. Nutan Thakur, a social activist, journalist and writer from Lucknow, sought to cancel the entrance examination and hold a fresh CLAT. The petition also seeks a stay on the declaration of the results. On May 24, Justice SS Chauhan of the Allahabad High Court issued notice on the petition and placed the matter for further hearing on May 28.
Rohit Tripathy, the advocate who filed the petition, challenged CLAT primarily on the ground that the Respondent had "blatantly deviated from their own set of guidelines", particularly with respect to the questions asked in the General Knowledge and the Legal Aptitude sections. Students across the nation had blamed NLU Jodhpur for asking questions out of the prescribed guidelines mentioned on the CLAT website
The website had clearly mentioned that the General Knowledge section would only contain 'matters featuring in the mainstream media between March 2011 and March 2012', but had questions like name the largest gland in the body, the 'S-shaped' ocean, the longest Indian highway and Aristotle quotes, clearly violating the guidelines.
Similarly for legal aptitude action, where it was told that the students would be tested only on legal aptitude and not any prior knowledge of law or legal concepts, and if a legal term is used it will be explained in the question itself. But there were many legal terms in legal aptitude section that, thereby contradicting their prescribed pattern.
When GyanCentral contacted Tanaya Thakur about the matter, she said, “I filed it because around 25 questions from GK and 10 to15 in legal section were out of the syllabus than what was mentioned in the website. In the petition, I have asked the Allahabad HC to see that CLAT 2012 is quashed and a re-examination is taken. This has hampered many of the aspirants and I hope the high court shall do what they deem fit.”
Around 25,769 students applied for the test that holds the key to gaining admission to 14 prestigious law schools in the country, including the prestigious National Law School if India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, with 1,702 UG seats. The test was conducted in 20 cities across 46 centres, where Delhi saw maximum number of students sitting for CLAT. The two-hour long examination consisted of English, General Knowledge/Current Affairs, Mathematics, Legal Aptitude and Logical Reasoning.
The order for the first civil writ petition that was filed in the court yesterday by three CLAT 2012 takers, Ujjwal Madan, Shubham Sinha and Osho Donnie Ashok is likely to come out on May 28 itself, the same day as the hearing date of the second petition. It is interesting to note that the CLAT result is also supposed to be announced on May 28 on the CLAT website. Will it be declared or not? For now, all we can do is wait and hope for the best till Monday.
To view the entire petition no. 2 you can click here.