A Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) PG candidate has moved the Delhi High Court to challenge the counseling fee being charged by the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs), on the ground that the fee so charged is exorbitant.

The matter was mentioned today by Advocate Siddharth R Gupta before the vacation Bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh and Justice Rajneesh Kumar Gupta, who listed it for hearing on June 23.

The petition moved by Jatin Shrivastava, who has secured the 474th rank in the results, contends that an arbitrary and exorbitant fee was being levied without even examining the suitability of the candidates to bear the expenditure.

According to the plea, there is a requirement of mandatory payment of an amount of ₹30,000 as the counseling fees for participation in the process.

Further, it states that a candidate is required to pay confirmation charges of ₹20,000 for participating in every round of the counseling and an equivalent amount of charges for freezing their option in the counseling process.

"That Clause 2 - ‘Admissions Counselling process’, vide Clause 2.1 titled as ‘Freeze Option’ of which, whenever any candidate participant intends to apply for ‘Freeze Option’, he is required to deposit a ‘Non-Refundable Confirmation Fees’ of Rs. 20,000/- at the time of opting for freezing of any seat. This fee is payable at every round whenever the candidate opts to Freeze any seat and thus may be charged even multiply in 2nd and 3rd round of counselling (considering there are only 3 rounds of counselling) whenever the concerned candidate participant intends to Freeze the seat for himself of his choice. Thus, vide various Sub-Clauses of Clause 2.1, for the 2nd and 3rd/ final round of counselling, the candidate participant would be required to pay a non-refundable amount of Rs. 20,000 - 40,000 only for freezing their seat in both the rounds," the plea states. 

Such a high fee is completely unheard of and has absolutely no nexus with the purpose and objective for which the counseling is being convened, Shrivastava has argued.

The plea adds that charging such an exorbitant fees is not only discriminatory and disproportionate, but also serves as an impediment for those who are not at all in the earning capacity. 

A similar petition has also been filed before the Kerala High Court, which is slated to hear the matter next on July 22.