Egregious fees, poor coordination and more: Committee submits scathing report on NUALS and Sify in conduct of CLAT 2018

The report of the Committee tasked to look into the irregularities that marred the conduct of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), 2018 is out. The report, in no uncertain terms, has found fault on the part of both the organising University i.e. the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi, and the technical partner, Sify Technologies Limited (Sify). .Serious concern has been expressed on issues such as the egregiously high fees charged for taking the exam, poor coordination between the organisers, and a lackadaisical approach apparent in appraising the problems faced by candidates who wrote CLAT 2018. .Moreover, the CLAT 2018 debacle has also been noted as symptomatic of systemic problems in the conduct of CLAT through the years..The evaluating Committee comprised Professor Manindra Agrawal from IIT Kanpur; Vineet Joshi, Director of the National Testing Agency; Dr Ashok Kumar Jaryal from AIIMS; and Prof Neeraj Dwivedi from IIM, Lucknow. This Committee had been constituted by the Union Human Resources Department on the directions of the Supreme Court last June..Pertinent highlights of their report include the following..Blame shared by NUALS and Sify for CLAT 2018.As admitted to the Committee, both NUALS and Sify were jointly responsible for pre-examination activities such as vetting and selection of examination centres. Sify took care of technical evaluation, whereas logistic checks (including UPS, air cooling etc) were jointly completed..However, in view of the conduct by both parties after issues cropped up during CLAT 2018, it is apparent that the role of NUALS was relegated to an administrative one, whereas Sify’s technical response was woefully inadequate..The lack of coordination between the two was inferred given the discrepancies in statements issued by NUALS and Sify regarding their response to issues reported during CLAT..As per the report, Sify failed to give clear answers when queried about the decision making process in responding to these issues, and whether the proposed solutions were satisfactorily extended to all candidates. .On the other hand, NUALS appeared unaware of the scale of malfunctioning until the Grievance Redressal Committee was constituted. On this aspect, the report states,.“It was surprising to note that NUALS was not aware of the magnitude, exact nature of the problems, solutions attempted by Sify Technologies Limited and decision process for determining of amount of time extension neither on the day of the examination nor till the constitution of Grievance Redressal Committee. There is discrepancy between versions of NUALS, Kochi and Sify Technologies Limited regarding the decision making process implemented during the currency of examination in real-time..Prima facie it appeared that the role played by NUALS, Kochi was primarily administrative and that complete technical control…was left to Sify Technologies Limited…”.The Committee has also makes critical remarks on lack of seriousness displayed by NUALS and Sify in appraising the issues reported. .It notes that there is no evidence of active involvement of NUALS in understanding or evaluating the scale or type of problems till the constitution of the Grievance Redressal Committee. On the other hand, Sify only offered a hypothesis that was “primarily a hunch” to explain the technical glitches. .No objective analysis was conducted to explain the CLAT glitches. The Committee goes on to infer,.“It was apparent that Sify Technologies Limited does not know the cause of the technical glitches…It also seems that no sincere attempt has been made to find out the cause of the problem.”.Absent and Incomplete Documentation.No audit reports of the pre-examination activities were made available to the Committee for the preparation of the report. This meant that there was no way of gauging whether procedures meant to be followed before and during the conduct of CLAT were actually followed..“… in the absence of actual audit/reports of all the centres and reports of the Mock tests, it is not possible to determine whether these procedures were followed in letter and spirit. However, Registrar, NUALS, Kochi in his reply to specific queries…stated that issues of repeated logins or non-appearance of question paper on login were not reported from any centre across India during mock testing.”.More importantly, the Exam Controller Day End Reports provided by Sify (153 in total) do not make any mention of malfunctions during the conduct of the exam. On this aspect, the Committee notes,.“Lack of any documentation related to the malfunctioning of computer system at such a large scale came as a surprise to the committee. No such reports could be provided by NUALS, Kochi by the time of preparation of this report.”.Fees Charged for CLAT grossly higher than actual expenses.From the documents submitted, the total income raised following the conduct of CLAT 2018 was over Rs 25 crore, whereas the Committee determined that the actual expense was Rs 2.6 crore. .The NUALS Registrar however informed the Committee that the expense had come up to Rs 5 crores, a document regarding which would be submitted after the final financial audit. .All the same, it was impossible for the Committee to ignore that by charging such high fees, NLUs would reap a profit of 90-95% for the conduct of CLAT..“… It is apparent that expenditure related to the examination is between 5-10% of the total income resulting in a profit margin of 90-95% that is shared as per policy amongst the NLUs… Committee strongly feels that examination fees charged is way above the required finances for conduct of the examination…. It is apparent that no attempt has been made to rationalise the fee with the trends of past expenditure.”.The Committee opined that a Rs 1500 fee for taking the exam appeared reasonable, as opposed to the egregious fee allowed to be charged presently..“The fee charged for the examination is not in accordance with expenditure and grossly high given the expenditure incurred. Even if it is a policy of the NLUs to earn profit out of the examination (however undesirable), earning 90% profit is egregious.”.On the need for systemic reform of CLAT.In this regard, particular emphasis has been placed on the need for National Law Universities (NLUs) to learn from past experience in the conduct of CLAT. On this aspect, the Committee notes,.“It is apparent that each yearly instance of tender for selection of service provider for CLAT is a fresh activity without any incremental learning from the experience obtained during the previous instance. .This is evident from the non-involvement of the any of the members for the CLAT-2017 tender process in the committee for CLAT-2018 tender and from corrigendum point no 32 (unavailability of the historical trend of candidates count across cities with tender committee of CLAT-2018). The historical trend of candidates can easily be generated from past data and should have been made available for better planning.”.The Committee goes on to conclude that given the advantages offered by using technology to conduct CLAT, the idea should not be abandoned altogether. .However, it is stated that the same must be carried out with appropriate technical expertise. In this regard, conducting university must also involve itself, rather than confining itself to an administrative role..More importantly, past experiences in the conduct of CLAT must be accounted for in its conduct every year. Bearing in mind these aspects, the Committee has suggested the following reforms:.– The service provider, selected through tender, should be engaged for at least two years. .– After each round of CLAT, the organising National Law University (NLU) must prepare an audit/report with recommendations for the next edition. .– The organising NLU must also be part of the command centre during the next conduct of CLAT. .– A dedicated team of technical analysts should be part of the team conducting CLAT to handle technical aspects of the examination..– In order to upgrade methods of conducting CLAT, the aid of government organisations dedicated to conducting standardised examinations on a regular basis may be enlisted. .– The report also notes that it is high time that the fee charged for CLAT is rationalised with the actual expenses incurred for its conduct..In the meanwhile it may be noted that apart from NLUs, the Bar Council of India and the National Testing Agency have also staked a claim for the future conduct of CLAT in Shamnad Basheer’s PIL for the reform of CLAT pending before the Supreme Court..This PIL will be taken up next after the upcoming Diwali break..Read the Report: