Common Law Admission Test - Background

Background

See also: Legal education#India See also: Autonomous law schools in India

Before the introduction of the CLAT, the autonomous law schools in India conducted their own entrance examinations, requiring the candidate to prepare and appear separately for each of the examinations. The time of the administration of these tests sometimes conflicted with the other or with other major entrance tests such as the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination and the All India Pre Medical Test. This caused students to miss tests and experience much stress.

There are fifteen National Law Universities in India, the first of which is the National Law School of India University, which admitted its first batch of students in 1987. Out of the fifteen, the National Law University, Delhi conduct its own separate entrance test. The CLAT admits the students on the basis of the national entrance test conducted by it generally in the month of May each year. With the emergence of other law schools, which also sought to conduct their admission tests at around the same time, students faced a hard time preparing for them. From time to time the issue was raised by different persons to conduct a common entrance exam to reduce the burden of the students to give multiple test, but given the autonomous status of each law school, there was no nodal agency to co-ordinate an action to this regard.

The matter drew national attention when a Public Interest Litigation was filed by one Varun Bhagat against the Union of India and various National Law Universities in the Supreme Court of India in 2006. The Chief Justice of India directed the Union of India to consult with the National Law Universities to formulate a common test. The move was strongly supported by the Bar Council of India.

Given the lack of a central nodal authority to bring forth a consensus on the issue, the Ministry of Human Resources Development, (Government of India) and the University Grants Commission of India organized a meeting of the Vice-Chancellors of seven National Law Universities along with the Chairman of the Bar Council of India. After a few such meetings, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by the Vice Chancellors of the seven National Law University on 23 November 2007 to conduct a common admission test. The Common Law Admission Test will be conducted each year by each of the law colleges and the responsibility of conducting the exam will be rotated and given on the basis of seniority. Nonetheless, the matter has not been resolved completely as there are other national law universities which are not taking part in CLAT.