CLAT 2025: SC slams Consortium, overrules Delhi HC order; changes 2 answers, deletes 2 questions

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has criticized the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) for the “casual manner” in which it has been framing questions for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT 2025). In this regard, the top court has issued a notice to the Union ministry of education, seeking a response to streamline the exam process.

A bench of Justice BR Gavai and Augustine George Masih expressed “anguish at the casual manner” of Consoritum, echoing the Delhi HC’s earlier suggestions asking it to appoint competent paper setters to avoid such errors in the future, as per the Bar and Bench report.

Despite the court ruling in 2018, neither the education ministry nor the Bar Council of India (BCI) have made any changes to the CLAT exam, the bench noted.

“In academic matters court is always slow to intervene since they are not an expert. But when academicians themselves err in such manner which impacts lakhs of students, court is left with no opportunity but to intervene,” Justice Gavi reportedly said.

Supreme Court revises CLAT 2025 answers

On April 23, the Delhi HC identified four errors in the CLAT UG question and answers and asked the Consortium to revise the CLAT results 2025. However, the top court today made the following changes (Question numbers refer to the CLAT master paper):

Question number 56: Regarding the fundamental duty to protect the environment, the apex court held both State and citizen as correct answers. Those who have marked C and D should be given marks and those who have marked A and B should be given negative marks, the Supreme Court said. Notably, the Delhi HC refused to interfere in the question.

Question number 77: While the Delhi HC considered this as an out of syllabus question, the Supreme Court today noted that option B is the correct answer. As per earlier order, those who marked correct answers will lose their marks and those who have marked wrong answers will get 0.25. However, as per the revised order, the top court said students who have marked option B should be given marks.

Question number 115: The Delhi HC directed the Consortium to award marks for students who opted for answer D. On the contrary, the Supreme Court noted that the question required a detailed mathematical analysis, which is not expected in a MCQ question for the law entrance exam. Therefore, it ordered the deletion of the question.

Question number 116: The high court ordered to revise the marks for candidates who got CLAT question paper set B, C, and D, and deemed it fit not to interfere with the Set A. However, the Supreme Court directed the Consortium to delete this question as well.