Legally
India: Lucknow: Friday, 24 July 2015.
The Common
Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2015 expert panel, which was formed twice to examine
alleged errors in the CLAT 2015 question papers, was composed of secret
members. CLAT 2015 convenor RMLNLU Lucknow rejected a right to information
(RTI) request for the names of the members of the panel which had dismissed
allegations that one-fifth of the CLAT 2015 LLB paper was error-ridden.
RMLNLU,
through its joint registrar Dr JD Gangwar, replied on 13 July to a 29 June RTI
by Alok Ratnoo, refusing to disclose the names of the expert panel members and
also stating that “grievances received [on CLAT’s email ID helpdesk@clat.ac.in]
within a specific time were looked in” by the panel.
RMLNLU had
formed the expert panel twice. It formed the panel once two days after CLAT
declared results for the first time and candidates and CLAT experts alleged up
to 40 errors in the LLB paper and 16 errors in the LLM paper. The first panel
reported that there were six errors in the LLM paper and only two errors in the
LLB paper.
Several writs
were filed by candidates dissatisfied with this report and pursuant to the
Bombay high court’s order in a writ before it, RMLNLU formed the expert panel
for the second time. But the convenor did not notify about the formation of
this expert panel on CLAT’s website, and before the timeline given in the
Bombay high court’s order could lapse RMLNLU announced on the CLAT’s website
that the CLAT admission process for 2015 stood closed.
RMLNLU then
reported to the Punjab & Haryana high court in a sealed cover that the
second expert panel had found that none of the dozens of alleged errors in the
CLAT 2015 papers were in fact errors. The P&H HC judge looking at the
sealed cover objected to this report observing that even he could make out at
least one error in the LLB question paper.
RMNLU Lucknow
did not even notify the result of the second expert panel’s examination on the
CLAT’s website.
Gangwar had
told Legally India in a phone interview after the first expert panel was formed
that he couldn’t reveal the names of the panel members to protect them from
being contacted individually by stakeholders, about various errors.
In the same
interview he had claimed that RMLNLU was committed to the cause of transparency
during CLAT 2015, but later rejected an RTI asking for a copy of the three MoUs
signed between CLAT NLUs since 2007. An older RTI later revealed that the
earliest of the three MoUs had already been publicly disclosed three years ago
by then CLAT convenor HNLU Raipur.
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