As controversial National Law Aptitude Test (NLAT) re-takes for candidates who had issues will be underway from noon today (14 September), the Jharkhand high court petition challenging the exam has been submitted to the Supreme Court with an intervention application, to join the matter that is set to be heard on Wednesday, 16 September.
According to one of the petitioners’ lawyers in the case:
The 5 students whose plea was dismissed by the Hon’ble JHC moves SC against NLSIU, Bangalore for relief. The petition has been by advocates Shubham Gautam, Baibhaw Gahlaut through the chambers of Kush Chaturvedi, AOR [including] Aditya Shekhar, Adv., Priyashree Sharma, Adv.
All lawyers were acting pro bono on the case, said Gautam, including the AOR.
Read the full special leave petition (SLP) here.
Retakes galore
We are currently working on the definitive analysis of the retakes. Keep your eyes peeled, we’ll link to it in the liveblog.
In the meantime, if you are sitting the retakes and have any issues (or even if not), please let us and other readers know in the comments below.
12:43: We have now published a more in-depth analysis of what NLS’ decision to hold a re-take today means and why it’s likely to upset a lot of candidates.
Paper leaked out during exam
13:22: At least as early as 12:53pm, according to screenshots from messaging groups we have seen, and with the retake of the exam still officially slated to be scheduled until 1:15pm, PDF copies of the retake exam paper were circulating on various online channels.
We have confirmed that this was indeed the content of the exam from a copy we had received by 12:57pm from a source.
Download the PDF of the leaked paper here.
The above PDF has gone massively viral on WhatsApp and Telegram groups and we have received several dozen copies of the paper so far.
While would not so much be a leak of the paper before the exam, it demonstrates at least one thing: the security measures to prevent candidates taking screenshots of the exam or otherwise managing to copy the content of the questions is clearly weak, to non-existent.
That it is possible and indeed happened is not surprising.
There are many ways the paper could have been shared and transcribed via screen capturing software and running each screen through optical character recognition.
Or if you managed to open up the ‘inspect source’ sidebar on your browser (which the tool makes harder but is pretty easy when you know how), you can literally copy entire questions into your clipboard (and there are apps that automatically save whatever you copy into a document).
Even worse, on Saturday, someone who took the test and wanted to show the security weaknesses, purported being able to see the entire exam paper at once with a few clicks in the page inspector, according to this YouTube video, while also de-activating the full-screen protections in the test so they could be on a different screen to the browser.
(Note: we have not able to confirm whether this would work in a live setting of the final exam, although it seems possible).
The video has been viewed more than 5,000 times so it’s possible someone (or more than one person) replicated the trick today.
13:51: Someone messaged us with the following view regarding the leak:
The question paper was definitely leaked by 12.53 on telegram groups. Some people are arguing that this was after the test was over so it does not matter.
The reporting time was 12.00. Exam was to start at 12.30. It is a 45 min exam so should finish by 1.15
If the paper is circulating at 1253 pm, the exam is STILL on. Plus, many people would have taken time for verification & logging in and so their exam would start at anytime between 13.30 & 1.15 pm (going by past experience when it took a few minutes to 45 minutes to log in).
Imagine the delight if you had the paper with you at 1253 and casually looked at it or got someone to solve it for you while you waited PATIENTLY to log in.
The Hindu reports glitches in logging in, again
14:44: NLS has issued a press release (see above).
The release accepts that “some candidates have copied the questions and circulated this on some messaging apps/emails after logging in”.
“While this is a malpractice under the NLAT proctoring guidelines, it does not affect the integrity of the exam as questions were already available to all candidates after login,” the release added.
NLS again pointed to its “technology platform” as the solution, noting that it “tracks and compares every candidate’s answer behaviour patterns and hence, any unusual candidate answer behaviour will be identified and result in disqualification”.
“We will continue to investigate this matter with the help of our technical partners and issue further updates if necessary,” added the release. “We reassure candidates and their parents that we will be transparent and ensure examination integrity at all times.”