Close to 74 per cent of applicants took the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2020 on Monday for entry to national law schools, N.K. Chakrabarti, the vice-chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences, said.

The attendance was “less” than previous years because of the pandemic, Chakrabarti said. He is the CLAT nodal officer as well.

Till last year, close to 90 per cent of applicants would take the test.

The exam was held at nine centres in Bengal. The CLAT 2020 was initially scheduled for September 7. It was rescheduled for September 28 because of a complete lockdown in the state on September 7.

Several applicants in Bengal had requested the Consortium of National Law Universities to reschedule the exam date saying they might find it difficult to reach the exam centres if it were to be held on a day of complete lockdown.

Faizan Mustafa, the vice-chancellor of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, and a member of the executive committee of the consortium, told Metro after the exam on Monday that at the national level 86.20 per cent of those who had downloaded the admit cards took the test.

At least 688,833 candidates in the country had downloaded the admit cards. The number was 3,000 in Bengal.

Close to 2,000 were supposed to take the test at the Calcutta centre at TCS Gitobitan in Salt Lake’s Sector V.

At some centres in Howrah and Hooghly, the attendance was close to 80 per cent.

The exam was conducted “successfully” at all the centres and no centre reported any technical glitch, Chakrabarti said. Candidates had to give a declaration at the time of entering the centre that they were not infected with Covid, Chakrabarti said.

Every candidate had been asked to bring their own masks and sanitisers and they had to reach the venue an hour before the exam.

The two-hour test started at 2pm.