Law entrance catches students off-guard

Thousands of aspiring lawyers found themselves defenceless after the Common Law Entrance Test (CLAT) sprang a surprise upon them with a revision in the question paper pattern that the candidates were unaware of. Shaswati Das reports.

Thousands of aspiring lawyers found themselves defenceless after the Common Law Entrance Test (CLAT) sprang a surprise upon them with a revision in the question paper pattern that the candidates were unaware of.

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"The paper was much longer than what was provided last year or what the sample papers have. The section on legal reasoning especially had very lengthy case dockets. I ended up leaving about 25 questions because of that," said Sonakshi Chaudhry, who appeared for the CLAT.

Another aspirant, Dhrupad Bharadwaj, said the English section had five passages instead of just one, which gave them less time to finish the paper.

The National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata authorities, who administered the test, however, maintain that the announcement regarding the change was made repeatedly in advance.

"The change was announced long time back. Maybe we were wrong in calculating the time and length (of the question paper), but it was done to put everyone on an equal footing," said MK Singh, convener of the CLAT exam.

The legal section along with the mathematics and verbal section, too, left students stumped. Only logical reasoning provided some relief to the harried students.

"We want only the best taking up law. There are students who think of this as a secondary option and others who come from lawyer families. This was done to introduce fairness in the system," added Singh.