‘CLAT results to be declared today’

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the decks for declaration of results of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2018 on Thursday for admissions in 19 prestigious national law colleges across the country.

A vacation bench of Justices L.N. Rao and M.M. Shantanagoudar did not allow the fervent plea of a few aspirants that the declaration of the results, scheduled on Thursday, be stayed as there were glitches during the CLAT held on May 13, causing loss of crucial time, thus violating their fundamental right to equality.

The top court, meanwhile, asked the Griev-ance Redressal Committee (GRC), set up by National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi, which has conducted the CLAT this year, to submit its report on June 6 after taking note of complaints of aspirants who have alleged technical and other glitches during the May 13 test.

NUALS, which conducted CLAT with the aid of private firm M/s Sify Technologies Ltd for admissions in undergraduate and post-graduate law programmes at premier law schools, has constituted a two-member panel to look into the complaints following the apex court’s direction.

Former Kerala HC judge Justice M.R. Hariharan Nair and Dr Santhosh Kumar G, head of the computer science department of Cochin University, are part of the panel.

Senior advocate Salman Khurshid and lawyer Zoheb Hossain appeared for some CLAT aspirants and apprised the court about the problems faced by them during the test which put them at a “disadvantageous” position leading to denial of fundamental rights.  

“There have been judgments in which the Supreme Court has held that even one undeserving candidate should not get in,” Mr Hossain said, adding that 200 questions were to be answered within 120 minutes and the technical glitches caused the loss of crucial few minutes, leaving the aspirants high and dry.