National Law Universities start admission process

Hyderabad: The process of admission into National Law Universities began on Friday, with 2,786 candidates admitted on the first day itself.

The Consortium of National Law Universities said here that the candidates were admitted out of the first allotment list released by it.

The Consortium said it had invited 14,992 candidates for under graduate (UG) and 4,081 for post graduate (PG) programmes for the counselling. Out of 14,992 candidates called for counselling, only 8,227 for UG and 2,166 for PG paid the counselling fee and are now eligible for admission in order of merit.

Many candidates, who did not have the realistic chance to get into any National Law University or the University of their choice, did not pay the counselling fee. Those who do not get seat will get full refund of their counselling fee, said Faizan Mustafa, Vice Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law.

The consortium had called five times candidates of total seats available for UG (2,596 seats) and PG (783 seats) for counselling. To ensure timely admission of the candidates who have appeared for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT - 2020), all the candidates in the Reserved Categories were called for counselling and that is why some candidates even with negative marks were also invited. However, these candidates are not likely to get any seat.

In any case, those who have paid the counselling fee alone can be given seats in order of merit and therefore, candidates with negative marks are unlikely to get seats, the Consortium said.

It also clarified that CLAT-2020 does not have any minimum marks and therefore calling of these candidates cannot be faulted.

The Consortium also said that it feels fully satisfied with Friday's order of the Supreme Court which neither ordered retest of CLAT-2020 nor given any stay to the admission process.

"Accepting the Consortium's argument, the Court has given petitioners liberty to file any complaint, if any, before the Grievance Committee which is headed by the Hon'ble Justice S. Rajendra Babu, Former Chief Justice of India. Consortium had already notified the Grievance Committee on its website."

The Consortium had invited objections to the questions, key and technical issues to the CLAT-2020. All objections were referred to a 13-member expert committee headed by a retired judge of the High Court.

"Accepting many objections, three questions were dropped and key was modified in respect of four questions. In all, only 4,839 candidates had filed objections and thus huge majority (54,604 candidates) did not file any objection," it added.

Diversity in National Law Universities has been an issue but this year large number of candidates from rural areas and underprivileged backgrounds have also been selected, said the consortium.

(This report from IANS feed has been edited)