New Delhi: The Supreme Court bench led by the Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, directed the Consortium of National Law Universities to ensure that no disabled student is denied access to the CLAT examination and that all provisions of persons with disabilities are followed.
"Please see the list of 13 disabled students appearing in this exam and it will be seen they are not deprived of the writers," ordered the bench comprising Justice PS Narasimha.
The court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation(PIL) filed by Arnab Roy challenging the recently introduced rules on scribes for CLAT 2023. The petitioner objected to new rules requiring disability to an extent to avail the benefit of scribe and that scribe should be an 11th-class student or lower and shall not be enrolled in any coaching.
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The plea said that it is "excessive and arbitrary" for disabled people. It also pointed out that student not enrolled in any coaching centre filters out most of the 11th-class students. In its last hearing, the court had also opined that benchmark disability can not be used to deny a scribe and has to be utilised only for reservation purposes. It had asked the National Law Universities to devise a framework so that all disabled people could avail scribes.
