The Delhi High Court has reversed its previous order regarding errors in the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) UG-2025 questionnaire. This decision was announced by a division bench consisting of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela after hearing arguments from the lawyers representing the petitioning aspirants who took the exam in December 2024, as well as from the Consortium of National Law Universities (CNLUs).
Next hearing on April 21
The bench announced that it will hear pleas against certain questions in CLAT PG-2025 on April 21. In the previous hearing, the high court discussed the questions challenged by petitioners in connection with the CLAT UG 2025 exam and the subsequent withdrawal of some of those challenges. The court had directed the counsel representing NLUs to file a counter affidavit within two weeks.
Last year, the CLAT 2025 exams, which are for admissions to undergraduate and postgraduate law courses in national law universities across the country, were held on December 1. The results and answer keys were released on December 7, 2024. However, several candidates approached the courts, claiming that there were errors in the question paper and answer key.
Why did the Supreme Court transfer the petition to the Delhi High Court?
The Supreme Court transferred all the petitions over the issue to the Delhi High Court on February 6 for “consistent adjudication”. The top court passed the direction on the transfer petitions of CNLUs. The Delhi High Court had previously said "suspense and anxiety" were not good for the aspirants and that it intended to complete the hearing on the petitions at the earliest for the results to be declared.
There was an urgency in the petitions concerning the undergraduate examinations and the petitions for the postgraduate course would be taken up separately, it said.
Several students wanted the cases to be transferred to the Delhi High Court, saying it passed a favourable order for some petitioners by identifying errors in two questions of the CLAT-UG 2025 exam and directing the consortium to revise their results.
On December 20, 2024, a Delhi High Court's single judge directed the consortium to revise the result of CLAT-2025 over the errors in the answer key.
The single judge’s verdict, which came on the plea of a CLAT aspirant, ruled the answers to two questions in the entrance test were wrong.
The plea challenged the answer key published by the consortium on December 7, 2024, while seeking a direction to declare correct answers to certain questions. The single judge said the errors were “demonstrably clear” and “shutting a blind eye” would amount to injustice. While the aspirant challenged the single judge’s order which refused his prayer over the other two questions, the consortium also moved the division bench of the Delhi high court against the single judge’s decision.
On December 24, 2024, the division bench refused to pass any interim order after prima facie finding no error with the single judge’s order over the two questions and said the consortium was free to declare the results in terms of the judge’s decision.
(With Inputs from PTI)