The Supreme Court on Monday cancelled a notification by the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru for a separate entrance exam, the National Law Aptitude Test-2020 held on September 12, for admission to its five-year integrated BA LLB (Hons) programme.
While cancelling the NLAT-2020 entrance exam, the apex court also directed that admissions in all 22 National Law Universities (NLUs) be conducted in accordance with Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2020 which is scheduled to be held on September 28.
A Bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan passed the order on a plea challenging NLAT-2020 filed by former NLSIU Vice-Chancellor R Venkata Rao, and the parent of an aspirant. The Bench, also comprising Justices RS Reddy and MR Shah, said all NLUs should start their academic session by mid-October.
"We thus conclude that home based online examination as proposed by the respondent (NLSIU) for NLAT-2020-21 could not be held to be a test which was able to maintain transparency and integrity of the examination," read the order by the Bench.
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is a centralised national level entrance test for admissions to 22 NLUs in India. Bengaluru's National Law School of India University is one of them.
On September 11, the top court gave NLSIU Bengaluru its go ahead to hold a separate exam on September 12 but restrained it from announcing the results and admitting any student till the plea was heard.
The Bench, which said it is an important matter which needs to be decided, had issued notices to the university and its VC, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, and sought their responses on the plea.
The plea termed holding of a separate examination as "manifestly arbitrary and illegal". It said that NLSIU's examination caused uncertainty and imposed a burden on thousands of aspirants.
A notice issued by NLSIU on September 3 stated that it will not accept the scores of CLAT 2020 for admission to academic year 2020-21 and an examination called NLAT will be conducted online.
On September 17, the top court reserved its order on the plea seeking quashing of the NLAT-2020 notification. NLSIU Bengaluru had defended its decision in the apex court to hold a separate entrance examination instead of CLAT.
The examination was held on September 12 with NLSIU announcing that 94% of the students who registered for the examination were able to attend it. However, many students told TNM that their examination was marred by technical glitches.
Students had also complained about the technical requirements of the home-based NLAT examinations.