SC declines to entertain plea challenging CLAT-PG 2025 results

PTI, Dec 9, 2024, 6:28 PM IST

The Supreme Court refused to entertain on Monday a plea challenging the results of the CLAT-PG 2025 examination.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, which was hearing the plea that contested the provisional answer key released for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) for postgraduate admissions, advised the petitioners to move the Delhi High Court with their grievances.

The bench, while refusing to entertain the plea, underscored the top court cannot act as the court of first instance in such matters and flagged concerns about delays in the release of examination results due to interventions by the apex court.

“We cannot be the court of first instance… We have on enough occasions said this. We have judgments where delays in results due to OMR sheet issues stretched up to eight years. Please go to the high court,” the chief justice of India said.

The bench, however, granted the petitioners liberty to approach the high court, stating, “We are not inclined to intervene in the said petition…the petitioner is given liberty to approach the high court.” The petition, filed by Anam Khan and Ayush Agarwal, raised multiple grievances regarding the conduct of the CLAT-PG 2025 examination held on December 1, 2024.

The petitioners alleged the provisional answer key released on December 2 contained significant errors, including incorrect answers to 12 questions.

The plea also objected to the process for raising challenges to the answer key, arguing the one-day window provided for objections, which closed on December 3 at 4 pm, was inadequate.

Further, they opposed the Rs 1,000 fee per objection, calling it exorbitant, particularly when added to the Rs 4,000 examination fee.

The CJI, however, dismissed the objection regarding fees, commenting, “Rs 1,000 per objection is not a big deal. Do you know how much expenditure is incurred?” The plea also sought a suspension of the counselling process for admissions to postgraduate law programmes at national law universities.