CLAT 2025 Exam Result.Image source: Getty Images
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday said it may have to intervene if errors are found in answers to exams such as the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT). Justice Jyoti Singh said these words while hearing the petition of a 17-year-old legal aspirant on Wednesday. In the petition, the candidates claimed that there were errors in the final answer key of CLAT 2025 (UG admission) released by the NLU Union. This examination provides admission to undergraduate law courses in law universities (NLUs) across India.
The NLU Alliance opposed the petition, arguing that objections to the answers had already been reviewed by three expert committees. Lawyers for the consortium argued that the court could not change its view on the matter.
The court acknowledged this concern but said the Supreme Court also recognized that courts can intervene in such cases under certain circumstances.
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Justice Singh said, “Yes, in judicial review courts must take a blind approach, but in many judgments it would be unfair to a candidate not to intervene when the answer to a question is clearly wrong.”
The judge said he tried to resolve some of the controversial questions and found there was a clear answer to one of the questions, in which “insufficient data” was chosen as the correct answer by the exam board, while the remaining three options were all incorrect answers. Ideally, the options should include a “none of the above” option or the correct answer, the judge said.
NLU Alliance consultants responded that sometimes answers are ambiguous and if there is no direct answer then candidates should choose the answer that is closest to the correct answer.
Lawyers for the NLU consortium expressed this concern
However, the court said there is a difference between a question for which there is no direct answer and a question for which all the options given are wrong answers. The judge said candidates could not be expected to mark the “closest” answer if all the answers given were wrong. “If all the answers are wrong, you have to give the candidate an advantage,” he said.
At the same time, lawyers for the NLU consortium also expressed concerns that if the court intervenes in the matter, the entire NLU admissions process may be affected.
He said it was not a case of the applicant student failing to meet NLU admission qualifications, although he may have wanted to improve his ranking. The lawyer asked whether the Delhi High Court should consider the case in this context, especially since it affects students across India. The case will be heard again on Thursday afternoon. The petition has been filed in the court through advocate Arijit Gaur.
