The Delhi High Court is currently examining 15 disputed questions from the CLAT 2025 UG exam, following complaints from candidates. The outcome of the case could impact the final results and merit list of the national law entrance test.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court reserved its judgment on a series of petitions contesting the results of this year’s Common Law Admission Test (CLAT 2025), which is used for admission to undergraduate law courses in National Law Universities (NLUs).
As with previous years, this year’s exam faced significant criticism, with many students across the country pointing out errors in both the questions and answers. Despite minor concessions from the Consortium of NLUs, students were compelled to seek legal recourse for relief.
On December 20, 2024, Justice Jyoti Singh partly granted a plea from a 17-year-old CLAT candidate regarding specific alleged errors in the UG paper.
This decision subsequently challenged by a division bench of the High Court, with the NLU Consortium arguing that the single judge had incorrectly taken on the role of an expert. The CLAT candidate also appealed for a further revision of his result.
Later, the NLU Consortium approached the Supreme Court, requesting that the matter be transferred to the top court. Similar petitions were being heard in the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the Bombay High Court, among others. To prevent parallel proceedings, the Supreme Court ordered on February 6 that all CLAT-related cases be transferred to the Delhi High Court.
The petitioners in the High Court have identified at least 15 disputed questions and answers. It is important to note that this list is not exhaustive, as additional petitions were filed after the NLU Consortium submitted its response.
With the outcome of the results now resting with a bench comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, we will now examine the specific questions raised by the candidates.
According to the rules published by the Consortium, students were allowed to submit objections to the provisional answer key by December 3, 2024. These objections were reviewed by an Expert Committee and later by an Oversight Committee. The Expert Committee headed by a former Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), West Bengal, and Karnataka State Law University. It included eight other experts from different academic and professional backgrounds.
The Oversight Committee, on the other hand, was led by a former Chief Justice of a High Court and had Vice-Chancellors from various universities as its members. After examining the objections, the Expert Committee suggested changes in two answers from the provisional key and recommended that five questions be removed. The Oversight Committee later agreed to withdraw four questions from the final answer key.
However, during the court hearings, it was pointed out that the Expert Committee had given a split decision on two logical reasoning questions. Furthermore, the Oversight Committee disagreed with the Expert Committee’s suggestions on two questions.
In their submissions before the Delhi High Court, the petitioners claimed that several issues were overlooked by the committees. They stated that the Oversight Committee did not properly assess many of the questions referred to it by the Expert Committee.
One of the petitions highlighted this lapse with the statement,
“The Oversight Committee failed in performing it’s duty as it applied it’s mind only in respect of Eight (8) questions in total; and that comprised only four (4) out of the disputed fourteen (14) questions which were placed before it, whereas rest of the l0 disputed questions were never considered.”
Petitioner Aditya Singh further alleged that the committees did not provide any reasoning behind the answers they finalized.
The petition read,
“The reasoning of the Expert and Expert Committee is not evident and the grievance redressal mechanism has totally failed because neither the Expert Committee gives any reason nor the Oversight Committee has considered the question and objections thereto.”
The petitioners specifically raised concerns about several sections of the exam, particularly Legal Reasoning. A large number of objections in this section were reportedly not evaluated by the Oversight Committee. The petitioners pointed out that the CLAT UG syllabus clearly states that legal reasoning questions should be solvable without any prior legal knowledge.
Also Read: Supreme Court Transfers All CLAT UG 2025 Result-Related Cases to Delhi High Court
This concern was also echoed by the Delhi High Court itself during a hearing.
The Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court remarked,
“You are testing legal understanding of a Class 12th student. He would not know consideration. This is for the experts to decide, but I don’t know. Will it be possible for a Class 12 student to know the meaning of consideration under Contract Law?”
- One such question under review is Question 56, a passage-based item on Constitutional Law that received 451 objections.
- Questions 77 to 79, which were based on concepts like void and voidable contracts, also drew strong reactions. One question about a contract between an adult and a minor led to 622 objections. Another related question, where students had to identify a void agreement from a list, received 389 objections.
Petitioner Yajat Sen argued that without background knowledge of Contract Law, it was impossible to find the right answer from the given passage. When the court asked why he hadn’t filed objections within the official 24-hour window, he explained the high financial burden involved.
He stated,
“My parents were not willing to spend Rs.15,000 for objecting to 15 questions.”
- Another disputed question is Question 81, which relates to a Legal Reasoning passage based on the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act.
- From the English section, Question 11 received the most backlash, with 891 objections filed due to a clear discrepancy. The Expert Committee and Oversight Committee had different views on this question. Recognizing the issue, the single judge of the High Court had earlier directed the Consortium to revise this question. However, the Consortium has since filed an appeal against this direction.
- In the Current Affairs section, Question 37, related to the 16th BRICS Summit, was another disputed item that the Oversight Committee did not review.
- Question 49, based on a passage on the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, received 148 objections.
- Question 88, which was about a seat arrangement puzzle, was recommended for withdrawal by the Expert Committee. However, the Oversight Committee overruled this and decided that Option D should be the correct answer.
- Question 97, based on a passage about the impact of COVID-19 and housing insecurity, caused confusion, with the Expert Committee offering a split opinion between Option C and Option D. The Oversight Committee sided with one expert and finalized Option C.
- In a similar manner, for Question 93 of the same passage, the Oversight Committee again chose Option C, going with one expert’s choice after a split opinion.
- Question 91, which was also based on the same passage, was left unassessed by the Oversight Committee.
- In the Quantitative Techniques section, Question 114 was finalized by the Expert Committee as Option D, but the Oversight Committee did not examine it.
- For Question 115, the Expert Committee marked Option A as correct, while again, the Oversight Committee did not evaluate the question.
Question 116 involved a reference error in all exam sets. The question number varied between different sets, making it confusing. The Expert Committee stated Option B as correct, but the Oversight Committee again failed to assess this item.
While these disputed questions remain under judicial review, a group of successful candidates who agree with the final answer key are seeking to intervene in the case. One such applicant appeared in court recently to support the stand taken by the Consortium.
During hearings, the Delhi High Court also raised questions regarding who sets and reviews the questions in sections such as Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Techniques. The judges expressed concern over the qualifications of the paper-setters.
One pointed remark made by the court was,
“You say questions are made by experts. For legal questions, GK, we understand. For logical and quantitative questions, they are part of maths, you do not teach maths. Then who sets these questions?”
The final judgment is awaited, but the court’s observations have made one thing clear: the Consortium needs to improve its objection-handling process and ensure qualified experts are involved in both question-setting and evaluation stages.
This case may lead to major reforms in how CLAT is conducted and how student grievances are addressed in future editions of the exam.