CLAT 2012 - Call for Justice

Background (Preamble):

The attached petition is directed to the Common Law Admission Test (2012) Committee and the National Law University Jodhpur (NLU-J) who's inability to execute a transparent, unbiased entrance exam will jeopardize the academic lives of 25,000 odd students.

We want to demand what we had signed up for. We believe that each of the 25,000 odd students who signed up for CLAT 2012 signed up for the same thing. We have seen the syllabus suggested by CLAT, the norms, the dead lines and that is how we decided to take the exam. How can NLU-J then, at the last moment, make a shift in this and create a test paper outside the prescribed syllabus? What are they trying to test here, the ability of a student to be a lawyer or an astrologer?

Petition:

As we all by now know and have read on the website of CLAT (www.clat.ac.in) – the syllabus that was prescribed for the CLAT 2012 – has been violated. The prescribed syllabus is a farce because the questions in the exam were outside the syllabus. This is akin to asking a cricketer to work on his batting and one fine day pushing him into the deep end of the pool and test his swimming.

The CLAT is one of the most prestigious exams in India. Students spend years, at times, preparing to crack the CLAT and embark on their journey towards a legal career.

We demand, on behalf of the student community at large, that such grievous misrepresentations and aberrations that have the potential to ruin young lives and demoralize a generation – often leading to overseas brain drain – be stopped at once. If the CLAT board wants to take bold initiatives, it should for once put on their own “logical reasoning” hats and ask themselves whether they have passed the test of reason.

The gravest flaw in the paper was that there was a deviation from what was stated would be tested, and what was actually tested.

Aberration 1:

General Knowledge: If the notification had clearly stated that nothing apart from the events covered in the mainstream media within a given time period would form a part of the syllabus, then the authorities ought to strictly adhere to it. This was simply not done. There were many questions based on general GK - such as which is the longest national highway, or the largest gland in the human body, when did India join the UN - to name only a few.

This has got nothing to do with the legitimacy of such questions from the point of whether they are pertinent and relevant to a law school entrance examination. Of course they are. BUT, if clear-cut stipulations have been laid down, then any deviation from the same will be a transgression, and when this comes at the cost of the career prospects of thousands of candidates, there can be no defence whatsoever.

Aberration 2:

Legal aptitude: the notification had stated that no prior knowledge of legal reasoning would be required/tested. In the paper, there were questions involving assertion and reasons, which, many have contended, does require prior knowledge of certain principles of law. The question remains moot - because there is no uniform rule that prior legal knowledge would be indispensable here, and the argument that such questions can be solved accurately with the help of only common sense and logic, is equally forceful.

Regarding those questions, which had only a fact, situation and no principle, it would not be correct to jump on to the ‘complaints and lambasting bandwagon’. Such questions have featured in some of the past years’ papers of NLSIU, and not ALL of them require knowledge of legal principles. What is required is application of common sense.

The question is not of whether some students could answer these questions while others could not. The question is, that as an educational institute, you represent the very edifice of society. Yes, we are living in a world today where words / thoughts / actions geared towards uplifting the moral fibre of society is passé. Yes, we are living in a world today where scams and scandals are the new buzz words, in a world where liquor bills of educational institutions are higher than government blood donation campaign charges. Yes, we are all contemporaries of this “social degradation”. Yet, the point remains that National Law Universities and the CLAT are a beacon of progressive India. Do we want to cripple the nascent feet that this intellectual renaissance that India is seeing?

It is time for bold initiatives by the student fraternity to ensure that our hard work, our dedication and practice does not go waste and that there is action taken to set things right.