NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a petition filed by a group of law aspirants from the SC, OBC and EWS categories seeking an independent and time-bound probe into allegations of a leak of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2026 question paper, observing that the plea had been filed belatedly.
A two-judge Bench comprising Justice P S Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe noted that the alleged leak was said to have occurred on 6 December, but the petition was filed only on 16 December.
“You say it was leaked on December 6. Why did you wait till December 16 to file the petition? Before the declaration of results, we would have appreciated it,” the Bench observed.
CLAT 2026 was conducted on 7 December 2025 between 2 pm and 4 pm across 156 test centres in 25 states and four Union Territories.
Although the plea was filed on 16 December, it came up for hearing before the apex court only on Wednesday. The court noted that the examination process had already been completed.
In the petition, the aspirants alleged that several videos, images and other digital materials were circulated on WhatsApp, Telegram and other social media platforms, in which the question paper and answers were illegally accessed and shared while the examination was still under way. They claimed that this resulted in unfair treatment of genuine candidates.
The petitioners sought directions for a fresh CLAT examination under the supervision of an independent committee if the allegations were found to be true.
However, the court found no merit in the prayers and rejected the plea. It also questioned the delay in approaching the court, even as it proceeded to hear another petition filed by Lalit Pratap Singh and others against the Consortium of National Law Universities (CNLU).
Despite advocate Malvika Kapila, appearing for the petitioners, arguing that the plea had been filed in time and clarifying that no direction for re-conducting the examination was being sought, the Bench remained unconvinced and refused to entertain the petition.
Kapila submitted that the alleged leak had irreparably compromised the sanctity of the examination and vitiated the level playing field essential to any public examination. “Since counselling and seat allotment are scheduled to begin on January 7, continuing with the existing results would cause irreversible harm to deserving candidates,” she contended.
The Supreme Court, however, declined to interfere and dismissed the plea.