Who Tests the Test?

**Siddhant Prabhu

Introduction

The Supreme Court’s [‘SC’] judgement on 7^th May, 2025 culminated a long serious of legal contestation between the Consortium of National Law Universities [‘Consortium’] and exam-takers of the Common Law Admission Test [‘CLAT’], prospective students of these premier law schools. This dispute, while situated within larger question of the organizational transparency and integrity of the CLAT, specifically addressed a challenge to the correctness of the answer key.

Herein, the SC, modifying the judgment of a division bench of the Delhi High Court [‘HC’], evaluated the veracity of six questions. Interestingly, this evaluation was not the first of its kind. Before being appealed in the SC, independent examinations of correctness were undertaken by not only multiple experts but also judicial bodies. 

Judicial Review, in situations like these, enables the court to scrutinize and potentially overturn decisions made by an administrative or quasi-judicial body, especially when those decisions are deemed prejudicial or arbitrary. The Court’s exercise of judicial review in this case raises pressing questions about its constitutional breadth.

This essay aims to identify the test laid down by the SC in cases of judicial review wherein courts seek to evaluate the veracity of answer keys set by ‘expert committees.’ The apex court’s own jurisprudence, in questions of overturning answer keys has intended to fashion a standard that is narrow, strict, and deliberatively restrictive.  Acknowledging that this existing literature, while supporting judicial restraint, does not adequately examine the present status of the threshold or the courts’ inconsistent application of it; this essay advocates for a more uniform application consistent with the test’s original conception. 

While conducting this analysis, this essay draws from the overarching vision of finality in entrance exams. This principle of finality is not merely for administrative convenience but crucial to a process whose legitimacy depends on certainty. Every such shortcoming results in a dual lapse: the candidate loses a rightful opportunity for employment, and the system suffers from the persisting burden of vacant posts.

In light of the same, Section II attempts to argue that since the Consortium already had an institutional expert-led redressal framework, judicial interference was never contemplated in such a case. Section III further asserts that by validating two correct answers, the Court diluted the “demonstrably wrong” standard and violated the presumption of correctness which arises when there are differing expert opinions. Lastly, Section IV discusses the conclusion briefly outlining the way ahead for competitive exams and the judicial review of answer keys.

The Consortium’s (un)reasonable body of experts

Judicial Review can only be exercised to overturn an ‘answer key’ if it is “demonstrably wrong”, that is, “no reasonable body of men well-versed in the particular subject would regard [it] as correct.” To gauge the exact meaning of this phrase, one must go to its initial application. The SC, while acknowledging the complete lack of any recourse for students in the Uttar Pradesh Combined Pre-Medical Test [‘UP CMAT’] used the ‘consensus of the purported answer’ in standard textbooks to fulfil this threshold.

It is pertinent to note that the UP CMAT provided no recourse to review or challenge questions within the institution of the exam itself. This lack of ‘any’ recourse led Justice Y.V. Chandrachud to remark that such problems could be solved if the Government devised a system for moderation of such key. Moreover, in the same breath, the SC went on to state that if any such purported error is brought to the attention of the university, complete effort should be made by the university to promptly decide on exclusion of such an answer from the final score.

This echoes the sentiment which restricts the application of the test to only remedy the situations wherein there is no recourse available to the aspirant in the test itself has been consistently reiterated judicially. 

Furthermore, the SC has also clarified upon the slightest disagreement among two bodies of experts, courts should caution on the side of restraint. There must be a strong presumption of correctness within the answer’s key, and a mere difference of opinion is not sufficient for judicial interference. Additionally, Justice Deepak Gupta has reiterated that ‘demonstrably erroneous’ implies that courts must not apply any inferential reasoning to prove incorrectness. 

In Ran Vijay Singh, this principle was explicitly acknowledged by the court wherein it highlighted that the court is permitted to make such intervention when “Statute, Rule or Regulation governing an examination does not permit re-evaluation or scrutiny of an answer sheet.”

In this case, it is argued that the Consortium’s internally embeded mechanism for redressal is sufficient to preclude any application of judicial review. This test allowing review of answer keys, clearly, was not created contemplating such situations and any such application is a blatant over-extension of its scope. The Consortium created three distinct mechanisms for review which evaluated the veracity of these answers. First, individual subject-expert committees headed by the former Vice-Chancellor of one such premier law school studied all objections raised by students. Next, their views on the objections were deliberated upon by an oversight committee which was headed by a former Chief Justice of the Kerala HC. Lastly, upon dissatisfaction of these channels, the aggrieved party could also approach a grievance redressal commission which was constituted under the chairmanship of a former director of the National Judicial Academy. It is clear in the instant case that any aggrieved appellant had ample opportunity of redress. 

Additionally, if indeed the requirement under this test be “no reasonable body of men well-versed in the particular subject would regard [it] as correct,” the obvious question that arises is what exactly qualifies to become this body. In the instant case, three different committees, all chaired by legal luminaries, constituted specifically with this purpose in mind regarded the contentious questions as ‘correct’. Yet, this approval was not sufficient to meet this threshold in the eyes of the court, which conducted its own examination. 

When this is read in consonance with the presumption of correctness upon disagreement of experts, the rationale of the court in Siddhi Laddha and other cases wherein there is already an institutional mechanism of redress is rather puzzling. 

Thus, it is argued that any attempt of the court to intervene in such instances is a clear example of judicial overreach and must be discouraged.

Twice the answers, half the legitimacy

When a question is found demonstrably wrong, courts direct its deletion from the answer key and consequentially from the tabulation of final marks. This would effectively limit judicial reach by only requiring ‘demonstration of a wrong answer’ and no premature and unqualified exploration of a ‘demonstrably correct’ option. 

Moreover, Courts’ have consistently reiterated that there is a presumption of correctness with the prescribed answer key. They have held that when there are two ‘possible’ right answers, the prescribed answer must be assumed to be correct as it fails to satisfy the ‘demonstrably wrong’ threshold. Hence, when the court finds two different ‘possibly’ correct options, it must apply this presumption and side with the conducting authority. This clearly implies that, other remedies, such as that of prescribing two correct answers is outside the judicial domain for being directly antithetical to this presumption of correctness. 

However, Justice B.R. Gavai diverged from this rationale while examining Q56 of the Master Booklet. Interpreting a passage which while discussing citizens’ right to climate change stated

 “both the State and its residents have a fundamental duty to preserve and protect their natural resources.”

The Court was tasked with studying the below options to pick the correct one according to “the aforementioned passage and decision of the Supreme Court.”

c. Both the state and citizens have the duty to preserve and protect natural resources.

d. State has the duty to maintain ecological balance and citizens have the right against climate change.

Having studied these options, the Court decided to overturn the HC’s judgement. The HC had considered Option D the only correct answer acknowledging the Consortium’s submission that there was a distinct legal difference between ‘Residents’ and ‘Citizens’. The SC not merely refused to accept this difference in the instant case but commented their ‘amazement’ on the stand taken by an organization which is “supposed” to be a body ‘led by scholars and experts’. This is of noteworthy importance, because in the same vein that the Court admits that this answer has been formulated after due consideration by ‘scholars and experts’; it finds itself capable to not merely re-examine an answer arrived upon by the deliberation of the paper-setters, three expert committees and two separate benches of the Delhi HC, but also undertake an inferential analysis of the reasoning adopted to justify it.

Furthermore, despite acknowledging Option D would be a ‘correct answer’, the court found it “appropriate” at that juncture to also examine the correctness of Option C. The Court subsequently made two puzzling decisions.

Primarily, it upheld the validity of Option C by stating “This Court, time and again, has emphasized that it is the duty of both the State and its citizens to protect and preserve the natural resources.” This is particularly intriguing because in the subsequent paragraphs of the judgement, the court itself highlights how the CLAT confines itself to arriving at answers from derivative reasoning based on information given in the passage within the question paper only. Thus, the Court’s own application of knowledge outside the question paper was clearly inappropriate.

Additionally, and more relevantly to the present discussion, the Court ruled that students having chosen both Options C and D will score positive marks. This raises several questions. First, when an answer is not demonstrably wrong (by the court’s own admission in the present case), is the court even allowed to exercise further examination into the answer key? Second, is this question of ‘demonstrable correctness’ not outside the court’s scope of review? Third, even if it were true that both answers could be correct: will there not be a presumption of correctness with the consortium’s key? Fourth, even assuming the answers of all the four prior questions is in the negative, can the Court instead of asking for a blanket deletion of the question, prescribe two alternative answers as the remedy?

Thus, in re-examining the answer key, the Court invited questions about its own powers while offering answers best left to subject matter experts. 

Conclusion: The Way Ahead

The SC’s intervention in CLAT 2025 highlights the judiciary’s walk on the tightrope between the principles of justice and fairness and the larger questions of institutional autonomy. In the present case, the Consortium had already created layered institutional processes involving multiple expert committees, yet the Court stepped in to reassess this question of correctness. This raises a twofold structural issue: first, the unsuitability of the judiciary as an appropriate forum for academic expertise and second, the compromise to the predictability and finality of competitive exams.

Going forward, clarity is essential and must be treated as such. The postponement of countless appointments for years at a row and a lack of finality of these results is dangerous to the very purpose of these examinations.

Courts must exercise restraint and apply the “demonstrably wrong” threshold only where errors are glaring and no credible internal remedy exists. Only then will competitive examinations command both legitimacy and stability in the eyes of students and the law.

**Siddhant Prabhu is a second-year B.A. LL.B. student at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. His interests lie in administrative law, constitutional law, and public policy. He can be reached at ballb224123@nujs.edu.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.