The Kerala High Court ruled that the requirement that applicants pass the CLAT exam in order to apply for the position of Assistant Law Officer at the National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) was in violation of Article 16 of the Indian Constitution.

To avoid upsetting the entire selection process, Justice V.G. Arun ordered the respondents to accept the petitioner’s application and conduct a screening process to determine her eligibility.

“The selection process is confined to only candidates who had participated in the CLAT-2021 PG programme, which violates Article 16 of the Constitution of India. Having held so, rather than upsetting the whole selection process, I deem it more appropriate to direct the second respondent to accept the petitioner’s application and conduct a selection test or interview for testing her eligibility for appointment to the notified post. Further action with respect to the appointment shall be taken depending on the outcome of such selection test/interview.”

An aspirant for the position of Assistant Law Officer at NTPC and an LL.M student at CUSAT with a specialisation in Intellectual Property Rights has filed an application. She earned a 70 percent average on her LLB and claims to have multiple academic honours to her name, making her qualified to apply for the position of Assistant Law Officer at NTPC.

The Corporation’s notification, however, stipulates that the candidate must have taken the CLAT-2021 exam in order to be considered for the position, and that they would be shortlisted based on their performance in the exam.

The petitioner’s lawyer, Maitreyi S. Hegde, argued that as a public sector undertaking falling under the definition of Article 12 of the Constitution, the NTPC cannot deny opportunities to people like the petitioner simply because she is pursuing her post-graduate studies at a university that is not part of the consortium of National Law Universities.

It was also stated that there is no connection between the goal of imposing such a restriction and the goal of the CLAT exam, which is to measure students’ intellectual brilliance, and the NTPC’s goal of selecting the finest among legal practitioners.

According to Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, the employer has complete discretion over the eligibility conditions for appointment to a given position. CLAT, he explained, is a national-level exam administered by the Consortium of National Universities for the purpose of filtering and choosing the best pupils.

Because of the high quality of law graduates picked through CLAT PG programmes, not only NTPC, but a number of other PSUs are following suit. Only 23 of India’s 1721 law institutions are members of the Consortium of National Law Universities, according to the judge.

The claim that graduates from other law schools would have taken the CLAT-PG cannot be accepted, because such candidates would make up a small percentage of the CLAT-PG candidates.

Law graduates aspiring to be appointed in public sector undertakings, according to the petitioner, cannot be expected to take an admission test in the hopes that it will be used as a criterion for selection to PSUs in the future; even candidates who had performed well in the previous year’s CLAT PG were not eligible.

As a result, the announcement limiting the selection process to individuals who have taken the CLAT-2021 PG programme was deemed to be indirect discrimination.

The test’s concentration, according to the judge, was on academics rather than assessing the skill set anticipated of future law officers. 

“Even if the argument that students graduating from NLUs acquire more skill and knowledge than their less fortune brethren is accepted, that is no reason to deny a level playing field to the others. As long as the Constitution guarantees equality of opportunity to the citizens, the State and its instrumentalities have a corresponding duty to ensure such opportunity to all.”

The respondents’ contention that conducting a selection exam across India for 10 positions is inefficient also fails when assessed against the touchstone of Article 16.

The respondents were given one month to perform a selection process for the petitioner after the court determined that the selection process had no relation to the goal.