A CLAT PG candidate Today (June 20) approached Delhi High Court claiming the Rs 30,000 counselling fee charged by NLUs is unaffordable and unfair. The case will be heard on June 23 by the vacation bench.
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NEW DELHI: A student who appeared for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) PG has filed a legal case in the Delhi High Court, raising questions about the high counselling fee being asked by the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs).
The student says the fee is too expensive and difficult to pay, especially for those from poor or middle-class families.
This petition was brought before the vacation bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh and Justice Rajneesh Kumar Gupta.
The court has now scheduled the hearing for June 23.
The petition was filed by Jatin Shrivastava, who got 474th rank in CLAT PG results. He has told the court that the amount being charged by the CLAT Consortium is not only very high but also fixed in an arbitrary way, without thinking whether students can afford it or not.
“The petitioner is entirely dependent on education loan for pursuing his LLM studies, which loan would be sanctioned only after the petitioner gets admission in any NLU of his choice and even the loan installments shall be transferable only to the concerned NLU and not to the CLAT Consortium or payable to the petitioner, in terms of the various covenants of the loan agreement,”
-the petition says.
The plea further explains that to take part in the CLAT PG counselling, students must first pay Rs 30,000, and this is compulsory.
Also, in every round of counselling, students have to pay another Rs 20,000 if they want to confirm a seat or freeze their choice. This amount is non-refundable, meaning it will not be returned if the student does not get a seat or withdraws from the process.
“That Clause 2 – ‘Admissions Counselling process’, vide Clause 2.1 titled as ‘Freeze Option’ of which, whenever any candidate participant intends to apply for ‘Freeze Option’, he is required to deposit a ‘Non-Refundable Confirmation Fees’ of Rs. 20,000/- at the time of opting for freezing of any seat. This fee is payable at every round whenever the candidate opts to Freeze any seat and thus may be charged even multiply in 2nd and 3rd round of counselling (considering there are only 3 rounds of counselling) whenever the concerned candidate participant intends to Freeze the seat for himself of his choice. Thus, vide various Sub-Clauses of Clause 2.1, for the 2nd and 3rd/ final round of counselling, the candidate participant would be required to pay a non-refundable amount of Rs. 20,000 – 40,000 only for freezing their seat in both the rounds,”
-the plea states.
Jatin Shrivastava has told the court that this type of high fee system is not normal and has no real purpose behind it. He said it seems to only create difficulties for poor students.
He also claimed that such fees are not only unfair and excessive, but also create a barrier for students who do not earn money or belong to low-income families.
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