CLAT 2019 to be held offline, Consortium launches Permanent Secretariat

In view of the technical glitches that have marred the conduct of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) in the past, the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) has unanimously resolved that CLAT 2019 will be conducted offline.

The decision was taken at the 4th meeting of the NLU Consortium, held on Wednesday at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore. A press release further informs that the feasibility of making CLAT online would be considered depending on future requirements. It states,

“Keeping in view that in last few years there have been glitches due to the fault of the service provider in the conduct of the online CLAT examination, the CLAT Consortium unanimously resolved that CLAT-2019 will be conducted Off-line. It was also resolved that as and when number of candidates taking up CLAT drastically increases or when admission to law colleges in the entire country would be based only on the CLAT score, the feasibility of online test will be considered.“

In its earlier meeting this month, the Consortium had taken a historic decision to constitute a Permanent Secretariat for the conduct of CLAT at NLSIU. Wednesday’s meeting also saw the inauguration of this Permanent CLAT Secretariat  by Chairman, Prof Faizan Mustafa (Vice-Chancellor of NALSAR, Hyderabad) and Vice-President, Prof V Vijayakumar (Vice-Chancellor, NLIU, Bhopal).

The CLAT Secretariat is intended to function throughout the year from its permanent office at Bangalore. Pursuant to ensuring the stable conduct of CLAT, the Consortium has also decided that a permanent website for CLAT will be created.

The other major decisions taken by the NLU Consortium in their meeting include:

– In the LL.M. admission test, some subjective portion would also be included in 2019 PG CLAT. The details of subjective portion will be worked out by the CLAT Executive Committee.

– To improve the quality of the question paper of CLAT, the Consortium resolved to create a question bank to which experts from all the NLUs and other institutions would be asked to contribute.

– It was also resolved that in each State, in addition to NLUs, CLAT will be conducted in other centres/cities as well depending upon the number of candidates. The decision in this respect too would be taken by CLAT Convenor and Executive Committee.

– The Consortium also decided to hold a workshop in collaboration with NAAC and UGC on evolving objective parameters for the accreditation of NLUs by NAAC and other accreditation agencies.

– It was unanimously resolved that Vice-Chancellor NLSIU, Bangalore shall be the ex-officio Treasurer of the Consortium. Prof R Venkata Rao took over as Treasurer of the Consortium.

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