Common Admission Test for Law on May 11

To rationalise legal education in India , the University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to conduct a common entrance test for the seven national law universities from this year onwards.

UGC reached to the consensus after a series of discussion with the Union Ministry of Human Resource and Development driven by Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Supreme Court. The meeting with the Vice Chancellors of seven law institutes was able to give this Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) a structure to fit into the students' demand of a common test.

The decision came on Thursday by the core and the implementation committees of seven National Law Universities under the Chairmanship of UGC Vice Chairperson, Prof. Mool Chand Sharma.

CLAT will be held on May 11 at 19 centres across the country. The two-hour CLAT will consist of objective-type questions on English Language, General Knowledge, Basic Mathematics, Legal and Logical reasoning.

There will be rotation basis for holding the exam every year depending on the seniority, this time National Law Institute, Bangalore will get to hold exam and the Vice Chancellor of NLS will be convenor of this year CLAT.

The brochure containing all the information of the seven universities, courses, eligibility criteria will be published and more details will be available on www.clat.ac in from January 25. The advertisement of the exam is slated to be released by the end of January.

Vice Chairman of UGC on Thursday said, “The Combined Admission Test and the IIT Joint Entrance Exam are models we wanted to study. Officials from the institutes were involved in the discussions preceding this decision.�

There is likely to be a meeting with the Bar Council of India to insist on the change of curriculum which has remained stagnant for over a period of time.

The test centres for CLAT would also be set up in Delhi , Chennai , Cochin , Mumbai, Chandigarh , Shillong, Jammu , Guwahati, Patna , Jaipur, Lucknow and Bhubaneshwar including the seven National Law Schools at Bangalore , Hyderabad , Kolkata, Raipur , Bhopal , Gandhinagar, and Jodhpur .

Thus, CLAT which has not only simplified the students dilemma because of the clash of the date of the testes and hectic period of travelling but is also treading on the same path to set an example with the likes of India's premier institutes of technology and management IITs and IIMs.