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The Bar Council of India (BCI) has offered to take the responsibility of conducting Common Law Entrance Test (CLAT). It has said so in a counter affidavit that it field in Supreme Court in an ongoing case about CLAT.  

The BCI counter affidavit states “That the answering respondent proposes Bar Council of India may be permitted to constitute the body of experts through its Legal Education Committee, to hold CLAT wherein the Legal Education Committee Council could involve some sitting and former Hon’ble Judges, noted educationists of legal education and eminent jurists and such irregularities as complained of by the petitioner herein may be effectively redressed.”

BCI emphasised on its being the body vested with authority to regulate legal education in the country as per the Advocates Act, 1961. Hence, it stated that entrance exam for admissions to National Law Universities (NLUs) isbeing conducted by a non statutory body, even though “a statutory body regulating the legal education in the country is duly constituted and is capable enough to conduct such admission tests”.

The case pertains to the petition file by Prof. Basheer, wherein he has sought the establishment of a “robust, structured and institutionalised mechanism for conducting CLAT to avoid uncertainties and reduce the scope for errors and lapses”.

The petition states “its planning and execution over the years has been marred with serious institutional lapses and inefficiencies, such as arbitrary and substandard question papers, incorrect questions and answers, questions that have no reasonable nexus to ones aptitude for the study of law, wrongful allotments of seats, unnecessary delays and an opaque administration that fails to comply with basic standards of transparency and the norms underlying the RTI Act.”