Not all heroes wear capes; this fits perfectly for Dr. Shrikrishna Deva Rao who, on October 17, 2018, stood up and confirmed that the Common Law Admission Test i.e CLAT 2019 exam will be conducted in the offline mode. Dr. Shrikrishna Deva Rao, with a hope to transform the reputation of the biggest law entrance exam of the nation, took the decision to quit technical and go traditional.
The National Law University, Odisha Vice-Chancellor took the decision at the 4th meeting of the consortium of National Law Universities headed by professor Faizan Mustafa. This decision has been taken considering past experiences. After all, who can forget all the technical difficulties which, back in 2015, the convenor of Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University (RMNLU) just couldn’t see coming.
In 2015 the convenor of RMNLU thought that switching to the online mode and ‘moving with the technology’ is the need of the hour and guaranteed that changing the mode of the exam will make further CLAT exams – problem free, “Controversy fee”, litigation free and simple. Interestingly, he had also said that changing the exam mode is also eco-friendly. Well, with 3.5 billion trees being slashed down every year, everybody appreciated this step of his. So with a happy face, students accepted the eco-friendly CLAT exam. Little did anyone know, the online mode will not be “student-friendly” in future.
Coming back to 2018, where our hero, Dr. Shrikrishna Deva Rao just couldn’t resist taking this major step for the sake of students as well as the falling reputation of the CLAT exam. This is probably great since the “Service provider” is also tired of being pushed in the witness box every year.
Congratulations are in order for Dr. Shrikrishna Deva Rao. Along with the change in the exam mode for the sake of students. The Wednesday meeting held at National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore also was full of surprises for another reason, the inauguration of Permanent CLAT Secretariat, addressed by the Vice Chancellor of NALSAR, Hyderabad and the Vice-Chancellor of National Law Institute University, Bhopal. In the same meeting, the experts have also decided to have a permanent CLAT website. All the work related to the CLAT 2019 exam shall be done from the new secretariat at Bangalore.
The consortium has also decided to include some subjective portion in the CLAT 2019 LLM exam. This responsibility is happily handed over to the CLAT convenor. Also, a question bank is going to be handed over to the experts of the National Law Universities so that they can contribute to the better quality of the CLAT Question Papers.
Depending on the number of candidates, it is expected that along with the NLU’s, the CLAT exam will be conducted in other Cities/ centers as well. So far, no other changes have been introduced in the CLAT 2019 exam. The CLAT 2019 Application form is expected to be released in the first week of January 2019.
Students can also expect the CLAT online mode to get back. In the press release by NALSAR it was also mentioned that as and when the number of CLAT exam takers increase and all the Law admissions are done on the basis of the CLAT exam, the online mode will be adapted again. This might take some time but till then, we can be a little less Eco-friendly and more “Student, CLAT, NLU, reputation friendly.
