The division bench comprising Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad granted 1 month to the consortium to file its response to a petition seeking conduct of CLAT-2024 not only in English but also regional languages.

During the hearing, the Court held that there are experts who translate papers of NEET into regional languages, then “why can’t we have these papers (CLAT) translated into regional languages?”

“If medical education can be taught in Hindi, if the entrance examination for MBBS can be held in Hindi, JEE can be held in Hindi, what is this you are talking about,” the bench said, adding even AIBE (All India Bar Examination) is also held in Hindi.

The counsel for the consortium said the body was not taking the plea as adversarial, and it was in agreement that the examination should also be held in other languages.

“The idea is definitely to make it more inclusive. The only concern is that we have to have necessary linguistic experts with legal knowledge,” he said.

The Public Interest Litigation, filed by Sudhanshu Pathak, who is a law student at Delhi University, contended that CLAT (UG) examination “discriminates” and fails to provide a “level playing field” to the students whose educational backgrounds are rooted in regional languages.