Plea seeks holding CLAT 2024 in regional languages: HC says concern genuine, asks body conducting exam to file reply

Mehta submitted that in case the matter is not heard at an early date, Respondent No. 1 (Consortium of National Law Universities, the executive committee of which conducts the exam) “will come with a plea that now they don’t have the time to translate the paper in any of the regional languages”.

After hearing all the parties, the HC observed that the concerns raised by the petitioner were “genuine” and asked the Consortium to “positively” file a response, granting them four weeks to do the same. The matter is next listed on July 7.

The PIL, filed by advocates Sakshi Raghav and Akash Vajpai, contends that CLAT (UG) examination “discriminates” and fails to provide a “level playing field” to students whose educational backgrounds are rooted in regional languages.

The Centre’s counsel stated before the court that NEET, which is held for grant of admission in MBBS courses, is held in all regional languages and JEE, which is held for engineering colleges and IIT, is also held in most of the regional languages. He prayed for time to seek instructions in the matter and was granted four weeks to do the same.

The counsel appearing for the Consortium submitted that there is a committee for the purpose of language in respect of the examination in question and the committee will take a call for holding the examination in other language also as per the eighth schedule of the Constitution of India. He said that the body was not treating the PIL as “adversarial” stating that the “idea is definitely to make it more inclusive…the only concern is that we have to have necessary linguistic experts with legal knowledge”.

The counsel appearing for the Bar Council of India on instructions submitted that the examination in question is not conducted by BCI, however, the examination which is conducted for enrolment of advocates is conducted in most of the regional languages.

The plea seeks a direction to the Consortium to conduct CLAT-2024 not only in English but all other regional languages of the Eight schedule of the Constitution of India as the “practice of taking CLAT (UG) only in English has an element of arbitrariness and discrimination and hence violative of article 14 and 29(2) of the Constitution”.