CLAT secretariat allows students access to soft copy of OMR sheets

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) secretariat will provide students with access to the soft copy of their Optical Mark Recognition sheets and also a chance to physically verify them once the mismatch in the barcode stickers discovered on the answer sheets of “few” of the candidates is corrected.

After completion of the process, the OMR answer sheets will be uploaded in each individual candidate’s login account.

“Besides providing access to the soft copy of the OMR sheets, the secretariat will also be open to their physical verification by candidates. As of now, an intense scrutiny is going on to identify and rectify the errors in affixing of barcode stickers,” sources in the Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), which organised the nationwide test this year, said on condition of anonymity.

The officials of the CLAT secretariat could not be contacted for their comments despite repeated attempts. The all India entrance test is conducted on rotation by 14 National Law Universities, including one located in Bangalore for admissions to their under-graduate and post-graduate degree programmes.

More than 30,000 candidates appeared in the nation-wide examination conducted on May 11 this year.

The GNLU announced the results of the nation-wide test on May 31 but withdrew it immediately citing some “technical discrepancies” after it came to know about mismatch in the Optical Marks Recognition answer sheets in case of “few” candidates. 

The CLAT secretariat later came out with another statement on Tuesday disclosing that there were mismatch in barcode stickers pasted on the OMR sheets in “few” cases. This came after officials looked into the complaints of some candidates who expressed doubts over the scores declared in the result.

The candidates were required to put the barcode sticker on the front page of OMR sheet while other stickers containing name, signature and of the candidate were to be affixed along with invigilator’s signature and later concealed on the back page of the OMR sheet during the examination.

“The barcode sticker affixed on the front page of OMR answer sheet and candidate sticker affixed on the back page, in few cases, was mismatching. Any mismatch between the barcode and the candidate sticker can result in the marks being reflected against a different roll number,” the CLAT secretariat noted.

The process integrity and confidentiality standards adopted by the secretariat are “very high” and the “robust mechanism” has been adopted to eliminate any scope of error, it maintained.