A petition was filed in Delhi High Court by a law graduate seeking that the notification mandating the physical appearance of students for CLAT 2020 is not correct keeping in mind the current situation and that CLAT 2020 should be conducted using an online portal.
In reply to this plea, an affidavit is filed by the NLU Consortium stating that it is not possible to conduct CLAT 2020 online as the students may manipulate their answers and then there will be no meaning of conducting the exam.
The following grounds were taken into consideration while opposing the plea: -
- The consortium will not be able to maintain equitable access to necessary facilities for a home-based exam for all 78,000 candidates. A home-based exam requires access to a laptop, desktop or computer, internet access, and network stability. The Consortium cannot expect all students to have access to these resources at home and doing so would severely harm those candidates from economically poorer backgrounds or areas without adequate internet.
- An online test at home with technological measure cannot ensure transparency, fairness, and the integrity of high stakes examination process such as CLAT
- None of the test centers identified for conducting CLAT 2020 fall within containment zones access to which is prohibited under the guidelines for Phased re-opening issued by the MHA.
- The Consortium has challenged the maintainability of the petition on the ground of territorial jurisdiction as the Consortium is based out of Karnataka.
On 6th September the NLU Consortium unanimously resolved to divest the functions of Professor Sudhir Krishnaswami as a Secretary-Treasurer of the Consortium who is also Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU Bangalore.
The affidavit was filed during the capacity of he being the Secretary at NLU Consortium. He signed the affidavit under his capacity.
It was announced by the Professor that NLSIU has decided to conduct its own online home-based entrance exam separate from CLAT 2020 for admissions.
