New Delhi, July 2 (IANS) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted additional time to the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) to file its reply to a petition challenging the “exorbitant” non-refundable confirmation fee being levied for Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) postgraduate admissions.

A bench of Justice Vikash Mahajan posted the matter for further hearing on July 17, and in the meantime, asked the Consortium of National Law Universities and the University Grants Commission (UGC) to file their counter affidavits.

Last week, a vacation bench of Justice Rajneesh Kumar Gupta agreed to examine the plea challenging “the arbitrary level of exorbitant fees” in the name of non-refundable confirmation fee at every round of CLAT-PG counselling and issued notices to respondent authorities, including the Bar Council of India (BCI).

The plea filed by advocate Siddharth R. Gupta contended that this non-refundable confirmation fee was not only unreasonable, but also violated Articles 14, 19(1)(g) and 21 of the Constitution, and was being levied mechanically without even examining the suitability of a large number of candidates to bear the exorbitant expenditure of participating in the counselling and admission process.

It added that the “exorbitant” non-refundable confirmation fee was also violative of the directions issued by the UGC since all the NLUs are bound by such directions under the provisions of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956.

The petitioner Jatin Shrivastava, a successful candidate of CLAT-PG examination, who has achieved 474 rank in the recently revised results, claimed that he is entirely dependent on education loan for pursuing his LLM degree, which would be sanctioned only after the he gets admission in any NLU of his choice and even the loan installments will be transferable only to the NLU concerned and not to the CLAT Consortium.

As per the plea, despite financial distress in his family, the petitioner has deposited the requisite counselling fees of Rs 30,000, and he chose to espouse the cause on behalf of all such large number of candidates who may be facing financial adversities to pay the exorbitant fees of Rs 20,000-40,000 per round of counselling.

–IANS

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