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Supreme Court today dismissed plea seeking postponement of CLAT 2021, recorded necessity of adherence to COVID 19 protocol and relaxing the notification by Consortium requiring vaccination of all students as most of them would be below 18 years of age.

A Division bench of Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice Aniruddha Bose, while hearing the matter today, said,

“Mr. Chatterjee you cannot come at the last moment, there are some 80000 candidates taking up the exam. If we issue a notice, imagine the amount of suspense in the minds of those students.”

Court conclusively ordered,

“Examination is scheduled on July 23, 2021 and we do not deem it proper to postpone the exam at this stage , however, we see force in the submissions of the petitioner that all safety measure have to be strictly followed at the exam centres to safeguard the health of the candidates taking the exam. The authority should not insist on students being vaccinated for the exam.

Accordingly WPs are disposed off.”

It was the brief submission by counsel for the petitioner that since the students appearing for the exam would be mostly below 18 years of age, notification dated June 14, 2021 by the Consortium requiring all candidates to be vaccinated, is arbitrary and cannot be forced upon.

Petition was moved by Advocate Kunal Chatterjee, praying for either directions to the consortium to postpone CLAT 2021 given to the apprehended Third wave, or suggest an alternative route for safely conducting the said exam.