CLAT 2025: The Supreme Court on Thursday transferred all petitions challenging the 2025 CLAT results from various high courts to the Delhi High Court to ensure a ‘consistent adjudication.’
Allowing the transfer of petitions of the Consortium of National Law Universities (CNLUs), a bench led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, along with Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan, directed that all petitions be heard by a division bench of the Delhi High Court on March 3.
“The matters relating to the common law admission tests, PG and UG, will be transferred to a division bench of the Delhi High Court where a letter patent appeal is pending. The records are to be transferred expeditiously within seven days,” it ordered.
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2025, conducted in December last year, serves as the gateway for admissions to undergraduate and postgraduate law programs in national law universities across India. Several petitions were filed in different high courts, claiming that multiple questions in the exam contained errors.
Apex court passed omnibus direction
The bench also passed an omnibus direction to transfer any other pending case in any other high court to the Delhi High Court. “We are also inclined to pass an omnibus order that in case of any other high court or in any other matter, the respondent/CNLUs is entitled to file a copy of this order before the high court for transfer of the case to the Delhi High Court,” said the bench.
The Supreme Court instructed the registrars of various high courts, including Bombay, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Calcutta, to transfer the judicial records of pending cases to the Delhi High Court.
Earlier, on January 15, the bench had suggested the possibility of consolidating all petitions in a single high court, with the Punjab and Haryana High Court being a preferred option.
Several questions in the undergraduate exam were wrong
Several pleas were filed in different high courts alleging that several questions in the undergraduate exam were wrong. Petitions were also filed challenging the CLAT results for admissions in PG courses.
The CJI said transferring all petitions to a single high court would ensure an expedited and consistent adjudication.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta represented the CNLUs, which filed its plea through advocate Pritha Srikumar Iyer. Mehta was in agreement with the transfer of the cases but had suggested the Karnataka High Court to hear the cases.
Several students requested the cases be transferred to the Delhi High Court, citing its favorable ruling for some petitioners. The court had identified errors in two questions of the CLAT-UG 2025 exam and directed the consortium to revise their results accordingly.
On December 20, 2024, a Delhi High Court single judge directed the consortium to revise the result of CLAT-2025 over the errors in the answer key. The single judge’s verdict, which came on the plea of a CLAT aspirant, ruled the answers to two questions in the entrance test were wrong.
The plea challenged the answer key published by the consortium on December 7, 2024, while seeking a direction to declare correct answers to certain questions.
The single judge said the errors were “demonstrably clear” and “shutting a blind eye” would amount to injustice.
While the aspirant challenged the single judge’s order which refused his prayer over the other two questions, the consortium moved against the single judge’s decision.
On December 24, 2024, a division bench hearing the challenges refused to pass any interim order after prima facie finding no error with the single judge’s order over the two questions and said the consortium was free to declare the results in terms of the judge’s decision.
The CLAT, 2025 for admissions in five-year LLB courses in NLUs was held on December 1 and results were declared on December 7, 2024.
(With PTI inputs)
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