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The bench of Acting Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela held, “Prima facie, we find no error in the decision of the learned Single Judge in finding that the answers to the two questions are demonstrably wrong. The learned Single Judge has examined the two questions carefully and has found that a different view is not a plausible one”.
The Delhi High Court, on Tuesday, upheld the judgment of the Single Judge in an appeal filed by the consortium of National Law Universities regarding the results of the Common Law Admission Test-2025 (CLAT-2025).
A candidate had previously challenged the final answer key for CLAT-2025, dated December 7, 2024, seeking its annulment for admissions to five-year LL.B. programs for the academic session 2025-26. The Single Judge directed the appellant to establish an expert committee to assess objections raised by the respondent concerning specific questions in the answer key. The appellant was also instructed to revise and publish a corrected answer key for questions 14, 37, 67, 68, and 100, recalculate the respondent’s marks based on the revised key, and appropriately re-rank the respondent in the merit list following the review.
The respondent alleged that multiple questions in the answer key contained manifest errors. Although the learned Single Judge declined to interfere with most of the disputed questions, the court identified questions 14 and 100 as being demonstrably erroneous. As a result, the appellant was directed to revise the respondent's results, along with those of other affected candidates, concerning these two questions.
The key directives in the judgment included: - Awarding marks to candidates, including the respondent, for question 14 in accordance with the revised key, which upheld option "C" as the correct answer. - Excluding question 100 from the evaluation process, as recommended by the expert committee, and recalculating the results accordingly.
The appellant, represented by Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi, argued that the term "Sellers of Stolen Hardware" (question 14) did not constitute a trade since it lacked legitimacy. However, the court observed that the referenced passage, authored by R.K. Narayan, explicitly characterized it as a trade and emphasized that the question tested comprehension rather than the legality of the activity.
For question 100, the appellant acknowledged that all answer options were incorrect but argued in favor of retaining option "D" (Data Inadequate) as the closest correct choice. The court rejected this argument, stating that selecting one incorrect option over others would render the process arbitrary.
The court after reviewing initial submissions, found no apparent error in the decision of the Single Judge, who had thoroughly evaluated the disputed questions and aligned with the expert committee’s conclusions regarding their inaccuracies. The court listed the appeal for further hearing on January 7, 2025.
For Appellant: Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi with Advocates Arun Srikumar, Shubhasnh Thakur and Riya KumarFor Respondent: Advocates Dhanesh Relan, Arjeet Gaur, Brinda Batra, Naveen Malik, Suryansh Jamwal, Harsh Kumar Singh and Sachin SharmaCase Title: Consortium of National Law Universities v Aditya Singh (LPA 1251/2024)
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