Supreme Court stays Delhi High Court order to revise CLAT UG 2025 results

The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the Delhi High Court ruling that had directed the Consortium of National Law Universities (Consortium of NLUs) to publish revised results of Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) for undergraduate (UG) courses after factoring in errors in four questions..A Bench of Justices BR Gavai and Augustine George Masih passed the stay order on a plea filed by a candidate Siddhi Sandeep Landa who claimed that she and other candidates who had received question paper set 'A' will be unfairly affected by the High Court order.Landa had secured rank 22 in the initial list."Due to impugned judgment the applicant and other students that received “Question Paper Set A” are being put at an unfair disadvantage as compared to similarly placed students receiving “Question Paper Set B, C and D.Students like the petitioner who received “Question Paper Set A” will not receive marks for a question not attempted. While, those in Sets B, C, and D were granted marks by the impugned judgement irrespective of effort or attempt, compounding the inequity, thereby robbing the petitioner and other Set A students of a level playing field," the plea claimed. The Court after hearing the petitioner issued notice to the Consortium of NLUs and posted the case for further hearing on May 5.The Court also directed the Consortium to publish on its website about the filing of the present plea."We request the Consortium to put on their website the fact regarding filing of the petition," the Bench directed..Senior Advocates KK Venugopal, Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Deepak Nargolkar and advocate Shoumik Ghoshal appeared for the petitioner..The Delhi High Court had ruled on April 23 that there were errors in four questions and answers in this year's CLAT for UG courses.Therefore, it ordered the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) to revise the marksheets of the candidates and publish/renotify the final list of selected candidates within four weeks.The following were the erroneous questions/ answers identified by the High Court:- Question no. 5 of master booklet: Incorrect option given in answer key; option (c) is the correct answer; all candidates who marked option (c) to get the benefit.- Question no 77 of master booklet: Out of syllabus to be excluded and treated as withdrawn. Students who marked the correct answer will lose their mark, and the students who marked the wrong answer would gain 0.25 marks that they lost by negative marking.- Question 115 of master booklet: The answer in option (a), “Rs.204 approx” as provided in the provisional answer key has been found to be incorrect and the answer in option (d), “None of these” is the correct answer. All candidates who attempted this question will get full marks.- Question 116 of master booklet: All the candidates who participated in CLAT UG 2025 with respect to the Sets B, C & D of question papers shall be granted the marks indicated against the said question. Since Set A did not have this error, the Court deemed it fit not to interfere with the marks obtained by all those candidates who answered correctly..The High Court judgment was passed in a batch of petitions related to the CLAT 2025 exams after the Supreme Court ordered their transfer from various High Courts to the Delhi High Court.On December 20, 2024, single-judge Justice Jyoti Singh had partly allowed a plea filed by a 17-year-old CLAT candidate Aditya Singh, regarding certain errors alleged in the CLAT UG paper.This ruling was challenged before a division bench of the High Court, with the NLU Consortium contending that the single-judge had wrongly donned the hat of an expert. The CLAT candidate also filed an appeal before the division bench, seeking a further revision of his result. Later, the NLU Consortium moved the Supreme Court seeking a transfer of the matter to the top court. Petitions challenging the CLAT results were under challenge before the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the Bombay High Court, among other High Courts. To avoid such parallel proceedings, the NLU Consortium urged the Supreme Court to transfer the case to a single court which was allowed by the top court.The matter then came to be heard by the present Division Bench of the High Court.