CLAT to go offline from 2019

​Hyderabad: Common Law Admission Test-2019 (CLAT-2019) for taking admission into the National Law Universities (NLU) in the country will be held offline from 2019. 

In a communiqué on Friday, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, Registrar Prof V Balakista Reddy said the decision to this effect had been taken in the fourth meeting of the Consortium of the NLUs, which was held on October 17 at National Law School of Indian University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, under the Chairmanship of Prof Faizan Mustafa, Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR, who is also the president of the Consortium.

He said in the last few years there were glitches due to the fault of the service provider in the conduct of the online CLAT examination. Keeping this in view, the CLAT Consortium unanimously resolved that the CLAT-2019 would be conducted offline. 

It was also resolved that as and when the admission into the law colleges in the entire country would be based only on the CLAT score, the feasibility of online test would be considered. Further, a permanent website of CLAT would now be created and CLAT Secretariat would function throughout the year from its permanent office in Bengaluru. 

It was also unanimously resolved that Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU, Bengaluru shall be the ex-officio Treasurer of the Consortium. Prof R Venkata Rao took over as Treasurer of the Consortium.

In another major decision, the Consortium resolved that in the LLM admission test, some subjective portion would also be included in 2019 PG CLAT. The details of the subjective portion would be worked out by the CLAT Executive Committee which consists of the Vice-Chancellors of NLSIU, Bengaluru, NALSAR, Hyderabad, National Law Institute University (NLIU), Bhopal as an ex-officio members. 

Vice-Chancellor of National Law University of Odisha (NLUO), Cuttack will be the Convener for CLAT-2019 and Prof Paramjit S Jaswal, Vice-Chancellor of Rajeev Gandhi National University of Law (RGNUL), Patiala as the nominee of the CLAT Convener.

To improve the quality of the question paper of CLAT, the Consortium resolved to create a question bank for which experts from all the NLUs and other institutions would be asked to contribute.

The Consortium also decided that in addition to the NLUs in each State the CLAT would also be conducted in other centres and cities depending on the number of candidates applied. A decision in this respect would be taken by CLAT Convener and Executive Committee, the communiqué said.

The Consortium also decided to hold a workshop in collaboration with NAAC and UGC on evolving objective parameters for the accreditation of NLUs by NAAC and other accreditation agencies. 

A permanent CLAT Secretariat was also inaugurated by Prof Faizan Mustafa and Prof V Vijayakumar, VC, NLIU, Bhopal and the vice-president of the Consortium. The secretariat has been inaugurated in the newly constructed building of NLSIU, Bengaluru in the presence of other Vice-Chancellors of NLUs. Prof Srikrishna Deva Rao, the CLAT-2019 Convener and Vice-Chancellor, NLUO, Cuttack joined the Consortium meeting through Skype.