Plea in SC flags ‘errors’ in CLAT PG 2025 answer key, alleges delay in exam

NEW DELHI: Two law students who took the CLAT PG 2025 test on Sunday have sued the Consortium of NLUs (National Law Universities) for alleged mistakes in the provisional answer key and for delay in providing question booklets on the exam day. The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT exam) was conducted on December 1.

Claiming that these ‘procedural irregularities’ violate their constitutional right to education and equality, the candidates have sought a stay on the release of CLAT results and the admission counselling process until an error-free answer key is released.

CLAT PG 2025 is the gateway to the LLM programme at national law schools across the country. Around 15,000 aspirants had registered for the CLAT 2025 exam, of whom 92.13% took the test at 141 centres.

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CLAT 2025 provisional answer key: ‘12 errors’

The petitioners Anam Khan and Ayush Agrawal, who hail from Raipur and Indore, respectively, claim to have found 12 erroneous answers in the provisional answer key uploaded on the consortium’s website a day after the exam. They also criticised the “miniscule” 24-hour window given to contest the answers suggested in the document and the “exorbitant” Rs 1,000 charged by the NLU Consortium per submitted objection.

“It is submitted that releasing an incorrect Provisional Answer Key for nearly 12 questions shows nothing but a lackadaisical attitude in conduction of the said examination by the Consortium,” reads the petition.

“It is submitted that there is no rationale in charging such an exorbitant fee towards objections which is filed by a candidate due to the mistake on the part of the consortium itself in releasing the wrong provisional answer key,” the plea further reads.

The final answer key is scheduled to be released on December 9, while the CLAT result 2025 is expected on December 10. The fee paid for the accepted objections is refunded to students.

Also read CLAT 2025: Domicile quotas in NLU admissions spark diversity, merit debate

CLAT exam delay

It was alleged that one of the petitioners, who appeared for the exam at a centre in Indore, got the question booklets after 2 pm, the exam commencement time, instead of the 1:50 PM mark stipulated in the rules.

Due to this delay, the student lost a few minutes in completing formalities, claims the petition.

Advocates Manasi Bhushan, Shakshi Sharma, Sanjana Patel, Akshit Chaudhary Chetan and Ankit Chaturvedi are representing the students at the apex court.