BANGALORE: In the very first year of the introduction of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), the ten national law schools across the country have been dragged to the high courts over the admission process. This has prompted them to consider emulating, from next year, the Common Entrance test (CET) model used by Karnataka for admissions to engineering and medical colleges.

The L-schools want to move away from the existing preference-based system of admission to a single-window seat-selection process like the State CET. National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore, which conducted the first edition of CLAT on behalf of the law schools, will moot the idea when the heads of all participating schools get into a huddle to commence work on CLAT 2009 next month.

"Though this year's CLAT went off smoothly, we had to face some problems in deciding the merit list of students and in allotting seats as per their preference. In several cases, the marks scored by students were the same and there was a tie. We had to call up students individually to get their II PUC marks and allot ranks based on those.

But since this is an all-India test, several states had not announced the Class 12 results. We do not want to face the same trouble next year," A Jayagovind, Vice-Chancellor of NLSIU, who is also the convener of the core committee for this year's CLAT, told to This website's newspaper.

Jayagovind says instead of releasing numerous merit lists and waiting lists to select students, the national law schools can come out with a single merit list for all schools and invite students for a two-day seat-selection process to make the admissions fair, easy and transparent.

"Since the total seats in all the law schools are not more than 1,500, we could look at completing the seat allotment within two days," Jayagovind said. The other bottleneck, however, could be different systems of reservation followed in the different law schools. While some schools reserve seats for foreign nationals, others set aside seats for girls from backward classes and students from within the state.

Admissions at the national law schools are currently done entirely on the basis of the scores in the CLAT; seat allocation is as per the preference marked in the application form by the candidate. The NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, will conduct CLAT 2009. Law schools in Delhi and Kerala are to join the consortium from next year.

Source: http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IE120080811041707&Title=Bangalor
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