[BREAKING] Kerala High Court issues notice in plea by CLAT 2021 candidates challenging ₹50,000 deposit charged for counselling

The Kerala High Court today issued notice in a plea challenging the compulsory ₹50,000 fee required to be paid by Common Law Admission Test (CLAT 2021) candidates for being considered for allotment of seats in National Law Universities (Sivapriya Ajith v. Union of India and Ors)..Justice Anu Sivaraman issued notice to the respondents including the Bar Council of India and the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) after admitting the plea filed by a group of CLAT 2021 candidates seeking admission to NLUs..The petitioners approached the Court through Advocate Thareeq Anwar K, aggrieved by the imposition of condition that ₹50,000 is to be deposited for being considered for allotment of seats to NLUs even before admission..Anwar contended that this is violative of their fundamental rights to equality and personal liberty and is illegal, unreasonable and arbitrary in nature..He pointed out that since the students are not admitted to any university at the time of remitting the amount, they are unable to avail of loans from financial institutions as well. Further, this amount has to be remitted within one day of receiving the counselling invitation. This makes it even more difficult for candidates from financially unsound backgrounds to arrange for the amount by any other means, he added..He argued that candidates belonging to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) communities who are granted waivers under the schemes of respective states are also required to make the payment of ₹50,000..In terms of the total costs incurred by the average candidate wishing to appear for the CLAT examination, the petitioner submitted the following facts:The application fees for General/OBC/PWD/NRI/PIO/OCI candidates was ₹4,000/- and for SC/ST/BPL category candidates, ₹3,500/-. If candidates wish to obtain previous years’ question papers, they have to pay an additional amount of ₹500/-.Once the answer key was released, any applicant raising objection must pay ₹1,000 for each objection..As per the CLAT calendar, the final Answer Key was released by July 27 and the consolidated mark list of the candidates was declared on July 28. The calendar also provides that on July 29, the Consortium of NLUs will publish the counselling invite list.The counselling registration process for the applicants will take place from July 29 to July 30 up to 12 noon.Within this time, the applicants will have to pay an amount of ₹50,000/- and fill up the preference list with a minimum of five preferred universities. Only those candidates who make the payment of ₹50,000 shall be considered for the first allotment process which shall take place between August 1-5..Irrespective of the marks obtained by the candidates, they will not be considered for the allotment process if they fail to make the initial payment of ₹50,000/-..Pertinently, Anwar pointed out that the Consortium of NLUs does not have any common prospectus for the CLAT admission process. However, each NLU has its own prospectus available to the candidates at the time of application.The plea stated,"Nowhere in the prospectus of the NLUs or in the notifications in the Website of Consortium of NLUs had any mention been made of the requirement of Rs.50,000 to be paid as a prerequisite to the applicant being considered for the allotment.".On these grounds and others, the petitioners requested the Court to issue directions to the respondents to strike down the requirement of such payments and to allot seats to the petitioners and other candidates who are similarly placed without insisting on the payment of Rs.50,000 . .The case will be heard next on July 30, 2021.