Delhi High Court Orders Review Of CLAT 2025 Results
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The Delhi High Court directed the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) to review the recently released results of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2025. A petition was filed before it challenging the answer key on the ground of its inaccuracies, the petition saying that errors in it would go to colour merit list and rankings of certain deserving candidates. The court highlighted that it is also important for justice not to be disappointed through the process and further noted the errors have to be rectified in order to avert injustice.
The prayer petition was of errors under two questions namely, question 14 and question 100. In both questions, he argued to be corrected and thus this will raise his score by 87 to 93.25 so that chances are enhanced at getting selected one of the top three National Law Universities (NLUs). Justice Jyoti Singh of the bench observed that these two questions had “demonstrably clear” errors. She added that allowing such mistakes would be unjust to the petitioner even though it may affect the results of other candidates. The court pointed out that although judicial intervention in academic matters is rare, such interference is required in exceptional cases wherein evident errors may lead to injustice for students.
Earlier, the consortium of NLUs had presented a defense of the process of examination by stating that all was put to rest in the last of it only with proper scrutiny by expert committees. Still, the Court stated an order for action because there had been apparent mistakes in the key of answers. In judgment, the court ordered granting marks to question number 14 and upheld the cancellation of question 100 to be excluded from the entire evaluation process. This partial intervention aims to ensure that the errors are corrected and results show fairness.
The judgment also clarified the nature of the exam questions, particularly noting that language comprehension questions should not require candidates to apply legal reasoning or analyze constitutional provisions. This clarification was helpful in the review process, guiding the correction of specific questions.
The release of the CLAT 2025 results already brought much attention as it came with an extremely low top score. Two candidates have topped the merit list, sharing the top spot at a score of 103.5, which equates to a 99.997 percentile. The score is one of the lowest scores in recent years. For example, previous top scorers in the last five years range from 108 to 127.25. In comparison, the top score in 2020 was 127.25, followed by 125.5 in 2021, 125.75 in 2022, 116 in 2023, and 108 in 2024. Although this is a lower top score, the competition has increased since the results of the 2025 exam. There were 18 candidates whose scores fell between the 99.954 percentiles and 99.936 percentiles. This indicates that the number of high-performing candidates has increased while still being fairly evenly distributed between male and female candidates.
In a nutshell, the intervention of the Delhi High Court in the CLAT 2025 examination results speaks to the accuracy and fairness in the process of conducting the examinations. In ordering correction in the identified errors, the court has ensured that the candidates are not unfairly prejudiced by the errors in the answer key. The ruling also serves as a reminder of the need for transparency and accountability in academic testing, particularly in highly competitive exams such as CLAT.
