‘No objection’, says Centre on holding CLAT 2024 in regional languages

The Central government has informed the Delhi Court that it has no objection to conduct the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) in regional languages, alongside English.

The Union Ministry of Education has given its no objection to holding CLAT in regional languages. It also referenced the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which stipulates that state institutions offering legal education should consider providing bilingual instruction in both English and the language of the state in which the institution is located. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Sanjeev Narula was apprised of the government’s stance on Friday during the hearing of a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a student named Sudhanshu Pathak. The Court has asked the government to submit a detailed response in the case and scheduled further deliberation for September 15.

The Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs), responsible for conducting CLAT annually, recently submitted an affidavit stating that conducting CLAT 2024 (scheduled for December 3, 2023) in multiple languages is not feasible due to significant substantive and procedural challenges.
The Consortium indicated that a policy decision regarding future editions of CLAT will be made after obtaining input from experts and conducting extensive consultations. Additionally, it argued that CLAT should not be equated with the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) because there are fundamental differences in their testing methodologies.

While the AIBE primarily assesses memory and general knowledge and can therefore be easily translated into multiple languages without concerns about testing parity and question paper complexity, CLAT focuses on comprehension and critical reasoning. Translating CLAT into various languages without ensuring consistent difficulty levels among the language options could lead to candidate complaints. Furthermore, it was explained to the Court that the Consortium lacks the capacity and resources to implement additional language options without compromising the quality and integrity of the CLAT exams.