On December 20, Justice Jyoti Singh partly granted the plea of a 17-year-old CLAT candidate, who had flagged errors in the CLAT paper for undergraduate admissions to National Law Universities (NLUs).
NEW DELHI: The Consortium of National Law Universities (NLU Consortium) filed an appeal before the Delhi High Court challenging a recent order by a single judge to revise the results of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2025 due to errors found in the question paper and answer key.
On December 20, Justice Jyoti Singh partly granted the plea of a 17-year-old CLAT candidate, who had flagged errors in the CLAT paper for undergraduate admissions to National Law Universities (NLUs).
Justice Singh agreed that there were clear mistakes in two out of five questions raised by the candidate. She emphasized that the court could not remain passive in the face of such errors, and directed the NLU Consortium to announce revised results with changes to the marks for these two questions. The revised results were to be applied to all CLAT candidates.
The NLU Consortium has now challenged the decision, arguing that the single judge overstepped by acting as an expert. The Consortium pointed out that the final CLAT answer key had been reviewed by experts, and the judge’s involvement contradicted established legal principles. The Consortium’s appeal asserts that courts cannot take on the role of experts in academic matters, including competitive exams.
In her 29-page ruling, Justice Singh also ordered the Consortium to extend the benefit to all candidates who had chosen Option C for Question 14 in Set A and to exclude Question 100 from the results.
The court stated, “This is not a case where the courts should adopt a complete hands-off approach. The errors in Question Nos. 14 and 100 are demonstrably clear, and ignoring them would be unjust to the Petitioner, though the Court is aware that this may affect the results of other candidates.”
Justice Singh further ruled that the Petitioner’s result should be revised to award marks for Question 14 based on the correct answer, Option C, which the Expert Committee had also agreed upon. This benefit would extend to all candidates who had selected Option C. Additionally, Question 100 would be excluded, in line with the Expert Committee’s recommendation.
The ruling followed a petition from a 17-year-old candidate, Aditya Singh, who had challenged the final CLAT answer key. Singh argued that the errors in the answer key had harmed his chances of admission to a prestigious institution and requested the formation of an expert committee to review the objections to the key.
The Consortium, represented by senior advocate Sandeep Sethi, argued that Singh’s objections were baseless and had no legal standing. Sethi also contended that the court lacked jurisdiction over the matter because the Consortium is a society registered under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, with its permanent Secretariat in Bengaluru, outside the court’s territorial jurisdiction. The senior counsel urged the court to dismiss the petition on these grounds.
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In its ruling, the court dismissed the Consortium’s objection regarding territorial jurisdiction, stating that the petitioner’s attempt at the online examination occurred within the court’s territorial boundaries. The court concluded that part of the cause of action arose within its jurisdiction, and the location of the Consortium’s Secretariat did not negate this.
Sethi had also argued that courts lack the expertise to evaluate exam answers and should not interfere with the assessments made by experts. However, Justice Singh rejected this argument, stating that there is no absolute prohibition against a court examining a challenge to an answer key, even if an expert opinion had been presented.
In response, the CLAT aspirant whose plea led to the single-judge ruling has filed an appeal seeking a modification of the order. He argued that the judge only addressed two of the five flagged errors and insisted that three other questions also contained significant mistakes. The aspirant has asked the Division Bench to correct these three questions as well.
Both appeals are scheduled for hearing tomorrow.
Case Title: Consortium of National Law Universities vs Aditya Singh (Minor)
