CLAT 2018: Father-daughter duo moves Madhya Pradesh High Court [Read Petition]

The Madhya Pradesh High Court will hear a petition against the conduct of CLAT 2018, filed by Salil Khare and his daughter, Simran Khare who had appeared for this year’s exam.

On Monday, the petition came up before a Bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Jagdish Prasad Gupta. However, following the recusal of a judge, the matter is likely to be heard later this week.

The petition filed through Advocate Sanjay Lal, corroborates the claims made by other writ petitioners across the country regarding technical glitches and mismanagement of the CLAT this year. Issues faced personally by the petitioner include the following.

• Questions did not appear on screen from the first 8-10 minutes, although the exam timer kept running. Even when the candidates logged off and logged back in, the timer would not start afresh. As a result of the loss of exam time, an estimated 17 questions could not be properly attempted.
• When the Next Question option was clicked, the paper would skip ahead three questions. If the subsequent questions were directly clicked, the answer would not get saved.
• The invigilators at the centre were not able to resolve any of the issues faced

This apart, the petition also highlights various reports of similar issues having cropped up in the conduct of CLAT across the country year. The reports have been sourced from internet articles, online testimony by CLAT aspirants and their parents as well as recorded videos demonstrating irregularities during the conduct of the exam.

Notably, the petitioner also refers to an online survey carried out by Law School 101 through a google form. It is noted that the responses recorded, indicated that there were irregularities in at least 243 exam centres this year.

The petitioners contend that representations made to authorities of the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi, which conducted this year’s CLAT, failed to prompt any positive response.

Instead, subsequent reports suggested that the authorities were not ready to take any action whatsoever to protect the interest of the petitioner as well as various other students, even when very little time is left for the declaration of results.

Therefore, the petition filed before the High Court prays that the CLAT 2018 conducted on May 13 be canceled and re-conducted, so that all candidates may have a fair and equal chance of clearing the exam.

Further, the petition also prays that the petitioner be awarded marks after considering that she could have attempted at least 17 more questions, had it not been for technical glitches.

With this petition, the number of High Courts called upon to intervene goes up to four, the others being the Delhi High Court, the Rajasthan High Court and the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Delhi High Court petition is due to come up for hearing today.

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