The Supreme Court on Monday stood firm by its resolve to not order a re-test of Common Law Entrance Test (CLAT) 2018 despite complaints from students about online technical glitches which saw many lose precious minutes during the conduct of the exam.
A Vacation Bench of Justices U.U. Lalit and Deepak Gupta, the fourth successive Vacation Bench to hear the petitions of the aggrieved students since last month, however agreed with a formula devised by the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS) at Kochi, represented by senior advocate V. Giri and advocate Karthik Ashok, to level the playing field for candidates handicapped by the glitches.
The court directed that the same formula, which was tried out successfully in the case of four of the petitioner-students, be extended to other candidates who lost time as identified by the Grievances Redressal Committee led by former Kerala High Court judge, Justice M. Hariharan Nair. The committee was set up by NUALS on the orders of the Supreme Court to address the problems of the students in connection with the conduct of CLAT 2018 on May 13. Over 50,000 had attended the CLAT.
The court, which had earlier declined to stay the first round of counselling for admissions to 19 prestigious National Law Schools across the country, said the students whose marks are adjusted according to the NUALS formula would be accommodated in the second session of counselling, which is scheduled to start on June 16. The court does not want to upset the first round of counselling session.
The Grievance Redressal Committee had placed on record in court a report of its findings.
Students have highlighted various issues regarding the conduct of the exam, including power cuts, failure of log-in system, slow biometric verification, blank screens, substantial loss of time in system log-ins, frequent resetting of computer systems, hanging of computer systems, server shutdown and difficulties in moving from one question to another.
The next hearing is scheduled for June 13.
