The Allahabad High Court has directed the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) to revise and republish the merit list for CLAT-UG 2026, citing arbitrary handling of disputed answers in the official answer key. However, it clarified that admissions completed in the first round of counselling would remain undisturbed.
The direction came from Justice Vivek Saran while partly allowing a writ petition filed by CLAT candidate Avneesh Gupta, who had challenged the correctness of certain answers in the test booklet.
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) Undergraduate 2026 was conducted on December 7, 2025. The petitioner approached the court contesting the answer key for three questions — Nos. 6, 9, and 13 — in test booklet-C, which correspond to questions 88, 91, and 95 of the master booklet-A.
Gupta contended that the decision of the Oversight Committee to retain one of the disputed answers was made by overruling subject matter experts without offering any rationale.
While the court declined to interfere with questions 6 and 13, it found merit in the petitioner’s challenge to question no. 9 — a logical reasoning question. It observed that both options ‘B’ and ‘D’ were plausible and should be accepted as correct.
“In such view of the matter, the respondent/Consortium of National Law Universities is directed to revise the merit list by awarding marks against question no. 9 of booklet-C (corresponding to question no. 91 of booklet-A) and to all other questions which correspond to the same in different booklets of CLAT-2026 entrance examination by treating both ‘B’ and ‘D’ as correct answers,” the court ordered.
The High Court instructed the Consortium to re-evaluate the answer sheets accordingly and republish the revised merit list within one month from the date of the order.
Importantly, the bench ensured that students who had already secured admission during the first round of counselling would not be affected by the revision.
“Since it has been informed at the Bar that the first round of counselling has already been finalized, thus the students/candidates who have already taken admission pursuant to the first round of counselling shall not be disturbed. However, for further counselling, the respondents are directed to act on the revised/re-notified merit list,” the court added.
The verdict is expected to impact upcoming rounds of CLAT counselling and could benefit candidates who missed out narrowly due to disputed scoring in the earlier merit list.
