Previous Year CLAT Question Paper Pdf with Answers

Are you an aspirant for the CLAT Exam? Well, solving previous year's papers will help enhance your time management skills and problem-solving skills.

Also, it will help improve your speed and accuracy in the final exam. To ease out your preparation, we have provided the previous year's CLAT Question Papers in this post.

You can download the papers by clicking on the direct like provided in the post below. So, Why Late!!! Download the papers and start practising from today itself.

CLAT 2021 Question Paper PDF Download 

CLAT was conducted successfully on July 23, 2021. It was a pen and paper mode paper so our faculty at LegalEdge could extract the question paper from our students on the same day.

The provisional answer key was released on the same day, however, a final answer key with a question paper will be published on July 27, 2021.

We have published the CLAT 2021 Question Paper with Solutions below for your reference.

CLAT 2021 Question Paper with Answer Key (All Sections)

CLAT Question Papers PDF with Answers

Last year, the Consortium changed the pattern of the exam. Hence, we have provided the previous year's question papers for better preparation. 

CLAT Sample Papers PDF Download

By solving sample papers, you will get an idea about the difficulty level of the exam, the different types of questions asked in the exam, and how to analyze the tricky questions in less time.

Download Self Designed Question Papers For CLAT by Legal Edge

CLAT LLB Previous Year  Question Papers PDF [2019]

The CLAT exam question paper for admission to LLB or 5-year Integrated law program had 4 series/sets last year. You can also practice CLAT Mock Tests for enhancing your preparation levels.

The previous year's papers provided in the table below are as per the old exam pattern.

CLAT LLM Previous Year Question Papers PDF [2019]

Alike UG, the PG exam was divided into 4 series as well. Here are the previous year papers from each series with solutions:

Download More CLAT Question Papers (LLB & LLM)

The following table has year-wise previous year papers that you can download in one click and start practicing them to improve your speed.

LLB Question Papers [2009-2015]

Let us have a look at the table below to download the CLAT previous year's questions papers for the LLB program. 

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LLM Questions Papers [2008-2017]

Download the LLM CLAT previous year papers from the table below and start your preparation accordingly for the exam.

How to use CLAT Previous Year Question Paper?

Before starting the preparation, it is important for you to be aware of the detailed CLAT Syllabus as this will help focus on important topics from the exam point of view.

CLAT Previous Year Paper: Resource of Abundant Questions

This is a resource that provides an ample number of questions for exam preparation. The most common and general preparation tip followed by many of you is solving last year's papers.

Gives Understanding of Level of Difficulty of Each Section

Not just clarifying the difficulty level of every section, Previous Year Papers clearly depict the difficulty level of every question asked in the exam.

Clarity on Weightage of Questions

You can get an understanding of the weightage of questions asked and the ones repeated every year from the CLAT previous year's Paper.

Confidence and Time Management Skills

Solving one previous Paper per day with a timer shall give an idea about how much time you are taking to solve the paper. You can work on managing time and boosting your confidence by solving these papers.

Plan Last Minute Time Table for CLAT Preparation

CLAT Sample Questions 2021

Practicing a CLAT model question paper shall help you to know the different type of questions asked in the exam. To help you get an idea about the type of questions asked in the exam, we have provided a few sample questions for CLAT Exam here.

English Language

The summer he turned 82, my father lost his stories. He was still vibrant, garrulous, and energetic, and initially, none of us noticed that his anecdotes were getting repetitive, that he was forgetting names and places, that he was confusing times and references. A man of many narratives, we listened to his oft-repeated tales, sometimes with feigned patience and sometimes with visible impatience.

Till the day the stories stopped. The words dried out. The memories disappeared. The change happened so gradually that its final suddenness took us, his immediate family by complete surprise. And when the stories dried up, the energy seemed to drain away from his soul. This loss of energy was immediately and visibly apparent as this was one trait, above all others that characterized my father.

A child of Partition, Baba had left his native Barisal in present-day Bangladesh, on the eve of this momentous event in 1947, at the age of 14. My grandmother, widowed since the birth of my father, her youngest son, decided to leave their sprawling homestead with extensive farming lands and immigrate to the yet-to-be formed republic of India, along with her four other sons. Thus, family lore tells us, she liquidated some of her assets, packed her immediate family and necessary belongings onto a steamer, and sailed into the teeming, seething city of Calcutta to set up a new life.

A seminal rupture in the subcontinent, Partition had wreaked havoc among countless families, uprooted and flung far and wide without any recourse. Baba often became that recourse – his contribution making a significant difference to families struggling to survive with some degree of dignity. It seemed his experience of early loss and deprivation had in a strangely converse way, endowed him with a generosity of soul that I have yet to encounter in another person.

It was thus shocking to see this extraordinary man with the mind, heart and soul of a Colossus shorn of his spirit.

In an effort to revive his flagging interest, I urged him to start writing down stories from his life. I bought him a notebook and with great flourish announced his assignment. Stories were my particular stock in trade. I’d nurtured an early passion for storytelling and story writing into a teaching career focussed on literacy. I used specific strategies to build a writing habit in my students, centred on the belief that we all have stories to tell. As the children became confident and joyful storytellers, their acquisition of benchmarked literacy skills outstripped that of their peers.

Could I use these same strategies to draw the forgotten stories from Baba? Would these forgotten stories, in turn, help him reconstruct a sense of self?

Q. Which of the following most accurately expresses the author’s main idea in the passage?

• As people get older, they tend to lose their memories.
• Asking an old person who is losing their memory to write down stories from their life may help them reconstruct their sense of identity.
• Partition was a very disruptive event in our subcontinent’s history, and we should ensure our grandchildren know about it.
• It can sometimes be tiresome and boring to listen to old people telling the same stories over and over again.

Q. Why did the author think that asking their father to write down stories would help him?

• Because the author had come across genetics research which indicated that this had helped other people as well.
• Because the author thought that thinking about the past would help their father regain his memory.
• Because the author had seen how their students had benefitted tremendously from similar strategies in their teaching career.
• Because the author had done the same thing in the past and had regained their memory as a result.

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Q. What does the word ‘garrulous’ as used in the passage mean?

• Quiet and restrained
• Tall and handsome.
• Moody and reflective.
• Excessively talkative.

Q. What role did the author’s father play for families uprooted by the Partition?

• He acted as a source of help to them in a difficult situation through his generosity of soul.
• He helped them find lost family members and put them in touch with them.
• He helped them by providing food and medicines when they were in need.
• He told them stories of their homeland since he had such a large store of stories and anecdotes.

Q. Why did the sudden stop in their father’s stories take the author and their family by surprise?

• Because the stop in stories was accompanied by an increase in his analysis of news and current affairs, and the author and their family were very interested in the same things.
• Because one day the author asked their father about the Partition, and he had forgotten that it had ever occurred.
• Because the author wanted to hear more stories about their grandmother, and he refused to talk about her.
• Because the author and their family used to listen to his stories impatiently since he would often repeat them, and had not noticed he was forgetting or confusing some parts of the stories.

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General Knowledge

The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress, the culmination of an effort by Democrats that further inflamed partisan tensions in Washington and deepened the nation’s ideological divide.

The historic votes, which won the support of almost all Democrats in the House chamber but not a single Republican, leave Trump as only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached -- and the only impeached president likely to win his party’s nomination for reelection.

The Senate will hold a trial early next year to decide whether the president should be convicted on the charges and removed from office, though the Republicans who have the majority in that chamber will almost certainly acquit him.

House Democrats took depositions from more than a dozen witnesses, held weeks of hearings, and wrote hundreds of pages documenting Trump’s efforts to pressure the president of [1] to investigate former Vice President [2] and his son.

Q. Donald Trump is the third President of the United States of America to be impeached. Which of the following presidents has also been impeached?

• Bill Clinton
• Richard Nixon
• George Bush Sr
• George W. Bush

Q. What is the name of the former Vice President of the United States of America whose name has been replaced with ‘[2]’ in the passage above?

• Joe Biden
• Nancy Pelosi
• Mike Pence
• Al Gore

Q. Which country’s name has been replaced with ‘[1]’ in the passage above?

• Russia
• United Kingdom
• Saudi Arabia
• Ukraine

Q. Which Article of the Constitution of India sets out the process for the impeachment of the President of India?

• Article 45
• Article 365
• Article 61
• Article 370

Q. Under the Constitution of India, a charge for the impeachment of the President of India can be preferred by:

• Either House of Parliament
• The Lok Sabha only
• The Rajya Sabha only
• Both Houses of Parliament simultaneously

Legal Reasoning

India’s Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (‘Bill’) starts encouragingly, seeking to protect “the privacy of individuals relating to their personal data”. But by the end, it is clear it is not designed to deliver on the promise. For, even as it rightly requires handlers of data to abide by globally-accepted rules — about getting an individual’s consent first — it disappointingly gives wide powers to the Government to dilute any of these provisions for its agencies.

Recently, messaging platform WhatsApp said that some Indian journalists and rights activists were among those spied on using technology made by an Israeli company, which by its own admission only works for government agencies across the world.

Importantly, one of the first to raise a red flag about the Bill’s problematic clauses was Justice B.N. Srikrishna, whose committee’s report forms the basis of the Bill. He has used words such as “Orwellian” and “Big Brother” in reaction to the removal of safeguards against actions of Government agencies. In its report last July, the committee noted that the dangers to privacy originate from state and non-state actors. It, therefore, called for exemptions to be “watertight”, “narrow”, and available for use in “limited circumstances”. It had also recommended that the Government bring in a law for the oversight of intelligence-gathering activities, the means by which non-consensual processing of data takes place. A related concern about the Bill is regarding the constitution of the Data Protection Authority of India (‘DPA’), which is to monitor and enforce the provisions of the Act. It will be headed by a chairperson and have not more than six whole-time members, all of whom are to be selected by a panel filled with Government nominees. This completely disregards the fact that Government agencies are also regulated under the Bill; they are major collectors and processors of data themselves. The sweeping powers the Bill gives to the Government render meaningless the gains from the landmark K.S. Puttaswamy vs. Union of India case, which culminated in the recognition that privacy is intrinsic to life and liberty, and therefore a basic right. That idea of privacy is certainly not reflected in the Bill in its current form.

Q. The Bill is amended, and the Government’s powers to provide exemptions for its agencies are removed. In such a situation, according to the author:

• The Bill would not deliver on its promise, since it is necessary for the Government to have such exemptions in order to effectively do its work.
• The Bill would not deliver on its promise of seeking the protect the privacy of individuals relating to their personal .
• The Bill would deliver on its promise of seeking to protect the privacy of individuals relating to their personal .
• The Bill would be a failure, since the Government would not be able to implement it.

Q. Suppose the Bill provides a test of proportionality in respect of privacy, which is: “the act which infringes privacy must have a legitimate aim and must be the least restrictive way of achieving that aim”. If a journalist is known for her reporting on corruption in Government agencies and the Government chooses to engage a surveillance company to collect messages exchanged by her on WhatsApp, in order to intimidate her, does it meet the test of proportionality?

• No; conducting surveillance on a journalist to intimidate her is not a legitimate aim.
• No; the Government should have taken measures such as imprisoning the journalist to ensure that she does not continue reporting.
• Yes; without collecting the journalists’ WhatsApp messages, there is no way for the Government to prevent her from reporting against it.
• Yes; reporting on issues that show the Government in bad light creates disharmony and the Government used proportionate force to prevent the same.

Q. The author is concerned about the constitution of the DPA under the Bill because:

• The author believes that collectors and processors of cannot be regulated by persons who have no experience in collecting and processing
• The author believes that if the members of the DPA are elected by Government nominees, the DPA will be ineffective in regulating Government agencies.
• The author believes that Government agencies should not be regulated under the Bill.
• The author believes that the DPA should be constituted of major collectors and processors of .

Q. Which of the following views can be correctly attributed to the author of the above passage?

• The idea of privacy can be overridden by Government agencies since their role is to protect citizens.
• The idea of privacy is not relevant to the Bill.
• Since the Bill gives sweeping powers to the Government, it is meaningless to reflect the idea of privacy in the Bill
• The idea of privacy as a basic right is not adequately addressed in the Bill in its current form.

Q. According to the passage, the committee headed by Justice B. N. Srikrishna called for:

• Watertight protection to Government agencies that process of individuals
• Limiting the grounds on which Government agencies may be allowed to act in a manner that endangers the right to privacy of individuals.
• The right to privacy to be exempted from the ambit of the Bill.
• The right to privacy to be endangered by state and non-state actors.

Logical Reasoning

Rahul Dravid, the head coach of India’s Under-19 cricket team, explained that the 2018 Under-19 World Cup team selection strategy was about providing opportunities to a lot more players to come into the India Under-19 fold. He explained that more than winning — which is not the right touchstone of success of a program at this level — what matters is how many of the players are able to move to the next level, that is playing first-class cricket. He, therefore, made a conscious decision to not select players from the previous World Cup to the 2018 Under-19 World Cup squad.

Q. Which of the following statements, if true, contradicts Dravid’s selection strategy?

• First- cricket selectors evaluate under-19 cricketers based on their individual performances.
• First- cricket selectors evaluate under-19 cricketers based on the win-loss ratio of the team they were a part of.
• First- cricket selectors evaluate under-19 cricketers based on their ability to cope with injuries.
• Players who have played in international tournaments face domestic competition better than those who have not.

Q. Which of the following is the most desirable outcome of Dravid’s selection strategy from his perspective?

• The team losing the World Cup, but 5 players from the squad going on to play first cricket.
• The team winning the World Cup, and no player getting selected for the next Under-19 World Cup team.
• The team winning the World Cup, and 5 players from the squad going on to play first cricket.
• The team winning the World Cup, and 1 player getting selected for the national team.

Q. Which one of the following statements is consistent with Dravid’s selection strategy for the 2018 Under-19 World Cup as stated above?

• The Under-19 World Cup is a stepping-stone to first- cricket and winning it should not be the end-goal.
• Selecting an inexperienced team at the under-19 level ensures failure and players who experience failure learn to be humble.
• When players are under the age of 19, they do not feel stressed about playing at a World Cup; however, as they age, their ability to play well depends on the number of matches they have already played.
• Playing a sport is more important than winning or losing.