The short notice and technological requirements for the National Law School University of India (NLSIU), Bengaluru’s entrance test “deprived a large number of students” from taking the test, the Supreme Court ruled on September 21. This violated the candidates’ right to non-discrimination under Article 14 of the Indian constitution as it especially denied students from marginalised sections of the society, a three-judge bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, R. Subhash Reddy, and. M.R. Shah decided. The top court has instead instructed NLSIU to admit students only on the basis of Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2020 which is to be held on September 28. Since 2008, all National Law Universities, except NLU Delhi, have used CLAT to admit undergraduate law students. However, this year, because of the pandemic, the test has been delayed by more than four months. On September 3, NLSIU had announced that it would conduct a separate admission test to avoid a “zero year”, that is, a year with no admissions. It had rationalised the decision by claiming that it could not afford to wait until the end of the month to admit students since unlike all the other NLUs, it has a trimester system. When it announced the technical requirements for the online admission test, it initially allowed candidates to only use Windows desktops and a 1 Mbps connection. After significant backlash from alumni, it eased the requirements to allow Mac, Linux and Android devices and a slower, 512 kbps internet connection. Candidates were only given seven…
