Despite taking note of the technical glitches in the conduct of the Common law Admission Test (ClAT) 2018, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for announcement of the results scheduled for Thursday.

Close to 250 students had approached various courts complaining against the technical glitches that delayed the conduct of the online test on May 13 at several examination centres. Of these, seven students had approached the apex court demanding appropriate relief.

The Vacation Bench of Justices lN Rao and M Mohan Shantanagouder was alive to the concern of the affected students and accordingly directed the Grievance Redressal Committee, looking into their complaints, to submit a report by June 6 on the possible solutions to redress the genuinely affected students. However, the Bench declined to hold up the results as close to 54,000 students had taken the test for admission into 19 prestigious national law colleges across the country.

The lawyers appearing for the affected students said that the CCTV footage showed how at some examination centres, the computers were malfunctioning or there was trouble with the software. Due to these issues, the students lost precious 15 to 20 minutes. The Grievance Redressal Committee formed to examine their complaints told the court that the technical glitch was taken care of by awarding extra time to the affected candidates. However, only few students availed of the same.

Senior advocate V Giri who appeared for the Committee said that the pending complaints should not stall the announcement of results. According to him, once the result is announced the Committee would be in a position to know how many of the affected students are within striking distance of the minimum cut off marks required for getting admission into the National law colleges. At the same time, those candidates who are way below the cut-off need not be considered as no amount of grace marks could qualify them for admission.

The bench explained this position to the petitioners led by senior advocate Salman Khurshid among others. The judges said, “The Committee will work out a normative scheme to award marks to those students who are within striking distance from the cut-off. But what is the point in delaying resultIJ”

Khurshid said that announcement of results will create higher level of frustration among students who stand already handicapped due to the harassment they had to undergo for no fault of theirs. He urged the Court to wait for the Committee findings and then proceed with declaration of results. However, the Committee’s suggestion weighed with the Court which directed the matter to be listed on June 6.