In Brief
CLAT 2018, a national entrance test for law universities, suffered severe technical glitches including login failures, frozen screens, power failures, and inadequate infrastructure at 250 centres across the country. About 4,690 candidates suffered significant loss of examination time. Petitioners sought cancellation of the entire test. The Supreme Court rejected cancellation as unduly prejudicial to unaffected candidates. Instead, it approved a normalization formula that calculates each affected candidate's answering efficiency and estimates how many additional questions they would have answered given the lost time. Revised scores were to be applied with supernumerary seats created to avoid displacing already-selected candidates. The Court also directed investigation into the conducting body's failures and systemic reforms.
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