CLAT 2027 Daily Questions Series: 5th November Legal Reasoning and English Answers

CLAT 2027 Daily Questions: Legal Reasoning and English

CLAT 2027 Daily Practice Questions: Current Affairs

Q1. India's TFR has fallen to 1.9. What does this indicate?

A. Every woman has exactly two children
B. The birth rate is below the replacement level
C. The population will double every year
D. The government has stopped family planning programmes

Answer: B

Q2. Why can the Supreme Court refer a case to a larger Bench?

A. To reconsider an important legal question or an earlier ruling
B. To allow Parliament to decide the case
C. To transfer the case to a High Court
D. To avoid giving a judgment

Answer: A

Q3. A State wants to impose a tax on the sale of goods. Which part of the Constitution gives it this power?

A. Union List
B. State List
C. Concurrent List
D. Fundamental Duties

Answer: B

Q4. What is the main idea behind the principle of stare decisis?

A. Courts should generally follow earlier judgments
B. Parliament can cancel every court judgment
C. All cases must go to a larger Bench
D. States can ignore Supreme Court rulings

Answer: A

Q5. How did the Supreme Court classify an additional levy calculated as a percentage of sales tax?

A. As an income tax
B. As a separate Union tax
C. As an increase in the sales tax rate
D. As an unconstitutional charge

Answer: C

Q6. What does judicial review allow courts to do?

A. Appoint members of Parliament
B. Examine whether laws and government actions follow the Constitution
C. Make laws for the States
D. Conduct elections

Answer: B

Q7. The petitioners argue that Section 16 affects judicial review. Which constitutional doctrine protects this feature?

A. Doctrine of Eclipse
B. Basic Structure doctrine
C. Doctrine of Lapse
D. Doctrine of Separation of Powers

Answer: B

Q8. Under the revised Agnipath arrangement, what happens to the 75% of Agniveers not selected for regular service after four years?

A. They are automatically made permanent
B. They can serve for another two years
C. They must join the police
D. They receive an automatic promotion

Answer: B

Q9. Which benefit has been announced for Agniveers serving the additional two years?

A. Higher pay and an enhanced Seva Nidhi package
B. Free overseas education
C. Automatic permanent commission
D. A guaranteed government job outside the armed forces

Answer: A

Q10. Who coordinates the work of India's three armed forces as the senior-most military officer?

A. Defence Secretary
B. Chief of Defence Staff
C. Chief Election Commissioner
D. Home Secretary

Answer: B

Q11. What is the main purpose of US midterm elections?

A. To elect a new President
B. To elect members of Congress halfway through a President's term
C. To appoint Supreme Court judges
D. To choose the Vice President

Answer: B

Q12. Which House of the US Congress brings charges against a President during impeachment?

A. Senate
B. House of Representatives
C. Supreme Court
D. Electoral College

Answer: B

Q13. Even after Democrats gained control of Congress, what power does the US President still hold?

A. Power to dissolve Congress
B. Power to veto Bills
C. Power to appoint all members of Congress
D. Power to cancel midterm elections

Answer: B

CLAT 2027 Legal Reasoning Daily Questions

The following questions are from the previous year’s CLAT question paper. 

Passage 1 

There are some advantages of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), 2023. For instance, for the first time, personal data belonging to or identifying children will have to be classified separately, with such data carrying a greater degree of security and privacy. The law also seeks to reduce the rate and impact of data breaches targeting Indian businesses. The Digital Personal Data Protection law, however, goes a step beyond by imposing penalties for cases where data is breached as a result of a lack of implementation of adequate security controls. However, it could be said that the law isn’t balanced, because it provides wide exemptions to the processing of personal data to the government. For instance, data can be processed “in the interest of prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of any offence … in India.” These kinds of exemptions are dangerous as they stand to legitimise widespread and unwarranted collection of data under the guise that such collection and processing may ultimately be useful for preventing or deterring a crime. 

Security agencies will have significant authority to collect and retain any data whatsoever, as is typically the case with exemptions relating to the maintenance of sovereignty, integrity, security of the state, preservation of public order, prevention of offences, and incitement to commit offences. The law also exempts processing of personal data held outside of India. The government is also exempt from being required to delete any data that it possesses, regardless of the purpose it may have been collected for, at the request of an individual, or by way of a prescribed data retention period.

The government is not bound by purpose limitations, allowing data collected for one specified purpose to be used for a new, incompatible purpose, which stands in contrast to the regulations imposed on businesses. 

[Extracted, with edits and revisions from “Digital Personal Data Protection Law Raises Questions About Consistency with Right to Privacy Ruling” published in The Wire dated 22-08-2023] 

Q1. Mr. Lal was suffering from a rare disease, and the data related to that was collected by the government. Suppose the DPDPA, 2023 provides exemptions for the government relating to data deemed “necessary for research, archiving or statistical purposes” if the personal data is not to be used to take any decision specific to a data principal and such processing is carried on in accordance with such standards as may be prescribed. Which of the following is most appropriate?

(A) The personal data of Mr. Lal can be preserved by the government till the research on rare disease is complete. 

(B) The data can only be used to make any decision regarding Mr. Lal. 

(C) The personal data of Mr. Lal’s health conditions and his personal data can be preserved by the private hospital forever and used for research by them without his consent. 

(D) All of the above. 

Answer: A

Q2. Suppose the DPDPA, 2023 provided an exemption for the processing of personal data for the purpose of ascertaining the financial position of any person who has defaulted in payment of amount due on a loan taken from a nationalised bank. Mr. X commits a default in repayment of the EMI of a loan taken from a nationalized bank.

(A) The bank can demand access to and process the personal data of Mr. X relating to family history of ailments from which Mr. X or his family was suffering. 

(B) The bank can process the personal data of Mr. X, viz., the particulars of the family, wife, children, brothers, etc. 

(C) The bank can process the data of Mr. X for the purpose of ascertaining the assets and liabilities of the defaulter. 

(D) All of the above. 

Answer: C

Q3. Suppose Mr. Y, a citizen of India, has been working in an MNC in New Zealand since 2021. The MNC has obtained the personal details of the employee for the purpose of recovering the amount of the indemnity bond if Mr. Y leaves the job within three years of joining.

(A) Mr. Y can file an application in India for protection of his digital personal data under the DPDPA if he leaves the job in September 2023 and returns to India. 

(B) Mr. Y, being a citizen of India, can claim protection against the MNC for misuse of his personal data even while serving in New Zealand. 

(C) The DPDPA 2023 is not applicable since the data is held outside India. 

(D) The DPDPA 2023 is not applicable since the data was obtained before the enactment of the DPDPA.

Answer: C

Q4. If personal data is defined as any data about an individual who is identifiable by or in relation to such data, which of the following shall be classified as personal data?

(A) Name of the Person. 

(B) Full Residential Address. 

(C) Aadhaar Number. 

(D) All of the Above. 

Answer: D

Q5. In which of the following cases shall access to personal data be granted, and the person whose data is accessed and processed cannot claim personal data protection?

(A) Mr. Z has committed many robberies, and the police wants to access his Aadhaar details and fingerprint data for the purpose of tracing Mr. Z. 

(B) It is apprehended that a person identified as Mr. G would spread hatred among various communities, which would lead to riots, and the police intends to use the mobile number and other personal details of Mr. G for the purpose of preventing such crimes. 

(C) Both (A) and (B). 

(D) Neither (A) nor (B). 

Answer: C

Q6. Which of the following is correct?

(A) Personal data collected by a health service provider can be sold to an insurance agency by the service provider without the consent of the concerned person. 

(B) Personal data collected by the government can be used for whatever purpose. 

(C) Personal data collected by the insurance company can be sold to mobile companies for mobile marketing without the consent of the concerned person. 

(D) All of the above. 

Answer: B

Passage 2

On September 1, the Supreme Court held that a child born of a void or voidable marriage can inherit the parent’s share in a joint Hindu family property. A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, however, clarified that such a child would not be entitled to rights in or to the property of any other person in the family. A voidable marriage is one that is made invalid by the husband or wife through a decree. A void marriage is invalid at its very inception. 

Chief Justice Chandrachud said the first step to the inheritance of a child from a void or voidable marriage would be to ascertain the exact share of his parent in the ancestral property. This could be done by means of conducting a “notional partition” of the ancestral property and calculating how much of the property the parent would have got immediately before his death. Once the share of the deceased parent in the property is ascertained through such a notional partition, his heirs, including his children by means of void or voidable marriage, would be entitled to their portions in the share. 

The Chief Justice said that Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act has statutorily conferred legitimacy to children born out of void or voidable marriages. In fact, Chief Justice Chandrachud pointed out that Section 16(3) stipulates that children from void and voidable marriages would have a right to their parents’ property. The court said the intent of granting legitimacy to such children in the Hindu Marriage Act should also be reflected in the Hindu Succession Act, which governs inheritance. Children from void or voidable marriages come within the ambit of “legitimate kinship” and cannot be regarded as illegitimate by the Hindu Succession Act when it comes to inheritance.

The case before the three-judge Bench was focused on an amended provision in the Hindu Marriage Act, Section 16(3). The case was referred to a larger Bench in 2011 after a Division Bench of the apex court refused to follow past precedents and championed the cause of children born out of illegitimate marriages.

“With changing social norms of legitimacy in every society, including ours, what was illegitimate in the past may be legitimate today. The concept of legitimacy stems from social consensus, in the shaping of which various social groups play a vital role,” Justice Ganguly, who authored the 2011 judgment, had observed. 

During the hearings on the reference, Chief Justice Chandrachud had agreed with the Division Bench’s findings that children from void and voidable marriages had rights over the property, whether self-acquired or ancestral, of their parents. 

[Extracted with edits and revisions from “Children from void, voidable marriages entitled to parents’ share in ancestral property: Supreme Court”, by Krishnadas Rajagopal, The Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/children-from-void-voidable-marriages-arelegitimate-can-claim-rights-in-parents-properties-sc/article67259229.ece ]

Q1. Ashima and Ashok got married to each other in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Kolkata, after which they both moved to the USA, where Ashok had a job. In the USA, they had a child, whom they named Gogol. Many years later, Ashima found that Ashok was already married to Sushma before their wedding in Kolkata. Ashok and Sushma also had a child from their marriage, Arpita, who was older than Gogol by 4 years. Ashok explained to Ashima that although he had no intention of cheating on her, he had to keep his marriage to Sushma a secret since his parents would never have agreed as Sushma belonged to a different caste. Ashima is shocked to learn that her marriage to Ashok is void as per Hindu marriage laws since Ashok was already married before their wedding. She is trying to explore possibilities so that Gogol doesn’t lose his inheritance from his father’s side of the family. Based on your reading of the passage, what do you think is the correct position with respect to Gogol’s inheritance rights?

(A) Gogol could claim the entirety of Ashok’s share of the ancestral property. 

(B) Gogol would inherit the entire ancestral property as the only son of Ashok. 

(C) Gogol would inherit his share from within Ashok’s share of the full ancestral property without prejudice to the inheritance of other legal heirs, including Arpita. 

(D) Only Sushma and Arpita are the rightful legal heirs of Ashok.

Answer: C

Q2. In the above fact scenario, consider a property that was purchased by Ashok from his own earnings in the USA, thereby not making it part of ancestral property but instead falling in the category of self-acquired property. Upon Ashok’s death, who would have inheritance rights over the said property?

(A) Sushma and Ashima. 

(B) Sushma, Ashima, Arpita, and Gogol, as they are all his rightful legal heirs. 

(C) Sushma, Arpita, and Gogol. 

(D) Sushma and Arpita. 

Answer: C

Q3. Based on your reading of the passage, how did the Hindu Marriage Act influence the outcome of the case on inheritance? Select one option from below:

(A) The amended provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act grant legitimacy to children from voidable marriages and therefore this logic should be extended to children born of voidable and void marriages under the Hindu Succession Act. 

(B) The amended provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act give legitimacy to the second marriage, and therefore this should also have an impact on the Hindu Succession Act. 

(C) The amended provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act grant legitimate status to children from void or voidable marriages and therefore this should also extend to the Hindu Succession Act. 

(D) The Hindu Marriage Act has no bearing on the case in question. 

Answer: C

Q4. 12-year-old Kausalya was married off to 23-year-old Dashrath in her maternal home in Uttar Pradesh. She completed her education after her marriage and went on to get a job as a teacher at a government school. Dashrath’s family, however, was opposed to her taking up a job outside the home and insisted that she should stay at home and look after her 2 sons, Ram and Lakshman. Kausalya, however, was very excited about starting her new job and sought advice from her younger sister, Vershini, who was training to be a lawyer. Vershini advises her that since she was married before she turned 18, her marriage was voidable and she could get it annulled. Kausalya, who was not very happy in her marriage, considers this option but is worried that her sons may lose their inheritance. Select the option that denotes the status of Ram and Lakshman to inherit their father’s ancestral property.

(A) Kausalya’s children cannot inherit Dashrath’s ancestral property but can inherit his self-acquired property. 

(B) Both Ram and Lakshman can inherit their father’s share of the ancestral property irrespective of the voidable status of their parent’s marriage. 
(C) If Kausalya decides to annul her voidable marriage, she and her sons would lose all rights to inherit ancestral property from Dashrath. 

(D) Ram and Lakshman can only inherit ancestral property from their mother’s side since she decided to annul the voidable marriage.

Answer: B

Q5. Ajay is married to 2 women, Diya and Riya, and both don’t know of each other. He was married to Diya first, when they were both around 23 years of age and studying together in college. They have no children. He later got married to Riya in a temple, and she had no idea about his first marriage to Diya. Ajay and Riya have 2 children, Raj and Rani. One day, Riya found out about Diya from one of Ajay’s college friends. She wants to divorce Ajay but finds out that her marriage to him is void since he was already married at that time. At a loss, she goes to a lawyer to find out about the rights of her children to inherit property. What is the most legally sound advice that the lawyer could give to her?

(A) He would say that her children can still inherit property from Ajay thanks to the Supreme Court judgment. 

(B) He would advise her to get her marriage registered so that they can inherit property. 

(C) He would advise her to ignore her marriage with Ajay since it is anyway a void marriage.

(D) He would advise her to speak to Diya and sort it out with her so that her children can inherit property since she would have the final say. 

Answer: A

Q6. In the above scenario, Riya wants to know if there is any way in which the judgment can come to her aid while inheriting property owned by Ajay. What is the correct position of law?

(A) No, she cannot inherit property as the judgment merely talks about the rights of children from void marriages. 

(B) Yes, she should fight for her rights to inherit property. 

(C) Yes, Ajay would have to give her property since he cheated on her. 

(D) She would get an equal share of property as Diya, since they are both his wives who got married to him without knowing about each other. 

Answer: A

Q7. Srimati’s first marriage was void due to being within the prohibited degree of relationship. Dhanalakshmi, who is the daughter of Srimati from her first marriage, confronts her mother once she finds her identity, demanding her share in her mother’s ancestral property. Srimati, however, subsequently married Dhrupad and has 2 daughters with him- Ira and Shira and is not interested in giving any property to Dhanalakshmi. Dhanalakshmi decides to assert her right in a court of law. How would Dhanalakshmi’s share be determined?

(A) Dhanalakshmi would not have any right in her mother’s share of the property since the right of inheritance pertains only to the father’s share of property. 

(B) Dhanalakshmi could demand a notional partition and get a share from Srimati’s portion of her ancestral property. 

(C) Being a child of a void marriage, Dhanalakshmi has no rights of inheritance. 

(D) It is Srimati’s decision as to whom she gives rights in her property

Answer: B

Practice Questions from CLAT 2027 English Section

Given below are practice questions from previous years’ question papers. 

Passage 1

I grew up in a small town not far from Kalimpong. In pre-liberalization India, everything arrived late: not just material things but also ideas. Magazines — old copies of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic — arrived late too, after the news had become stale by months or, often, years. This temporal gap turned journalism into literature, news into legend, and historical events into something akin to plotless stories. But like those who knew no other life, we accepted this as the norm. The dearth of reading material in towns and villages in socialist India is hard to imagine, and it produced two categories of people: those who stopped reading after school or college, and those — including children — who read anything they could find. I read road signs with the enthusiasm that attaches to reading thrillers. When the itinerant kabadiwala, collector of papers, magazines, and rejected things, visited our neighbourhood, I rushed to the house where he was doing business. He bought things at unimaginably low prices from those who’d stopped having any use for them, and I rummaged through his sacks of old magazines. Sometimes, on days when business was good, he allowed me a couple of copies of Sportsworld magazine for free. I’d run home and, ignoring my mother’s scolding, plunge right in — consuming news about India’s victory in the Benson and Hedges Cup…. Two takeaways from these experiences have marked my understanding of the provincial reader’s life: the sense of belatedness, of everything coming late, and the desire for pleasure in language. …. Speaking of belatedness, the awareness of having been born at the wrong time in history, of inventing things that had already been discovered elsewhere, far away, without our knowledge or cooperation, is a moment of epiphany and deep sadness. I remember a professor’s choked voice, narrating to me how all the arguments he’d made in his doctoral dissertation, written over many, many years of hard work (for there indeed was a time when PhDs were written over decades), had suddenly come to naught after he’d discovered the work of C.W.E. Bigsby. This I realised as I grew older was one of the characteristics of provincial life: that they (usually males) were saying trite things with the confidence of someone declaring them for the first time. I, therefore, grew up surrounded by would-be Newtons who claimed to have discovered gravity (again). There’s a deep sense of tragedy attending this sort of thing — the sad embarrassment of always arriving after the party is over. And there’s a harsh word for that sense of belatedness: “dated.” What rescues it is the unpredictability of these anachronistic “discoveries” — the randomness and haphazardness involved in mapping connections among thoughts and ideas, in a way that hasn’t yet been professionalised. [Extracted, with edits and revisions, from “The Provincial Reader”, by Sumana Roy, Los Angeles Review of Books] 

Q1. What use was the kabadiwala (wastepicker) to the author?

Option 1: The kabadiwala bought up all her magazines. 

Option 2: The kabadiwala’s stock of books and magazines was of interest to the author.

Option 3: The kabadiwala was about to steal the author’s magazines. 

Option 4: The author ordered books online, which the kabadiwala delivered. 

Answer: The kabadiwala’s stock of books and magazines was of interest to the author.

Q2. What, according to the author, is essential about the experience of being a ‘provincial reader’?

Option 1: Belatedness in the sense of coming late for everything. 

Option 2: Over-eagerness. 

Option 3: Accepting a temporal gap between what was current in the wider world and the time at which these arrived in the provincial location.

Option 4: None of the above 

Answer: Accepting a temporal gap between what was current in the wider world and the time at which these arrived in the provincial location.

Q3. Why did the author feel a sense of epiphany and deep sadness?

Option 1: Because the things that felt special and unique to the author were already established and accepted thought in the wider world. 

Option 2: Because the author was less well-read than others. 

Option 3: Because the author missed being in a big city. 

Option 4: All the above 

Answer: Because the things that felt special and unique to the author were already established and accepted thought in the wider world.

Q4. What does the word ‘anachronistic’ as used in the passage mean?

Option 1: Rooted in a non-urban setting 

Option 2: Related to a mofussil area 

Option 3: Connected with another time 

Option 4: Opposed to prevailing sensibilities 

Answer: Connected with another time

Q5. Which of the following options captures the meaning of the last sentence best?

Option 1: Though the author feels provincial, she pretends to be from the metropolis. 
Option 2: Though the author feels dated in her access to intellectual ideas, her lack of metropolitan sophistication lets her engage with the ideas with some originality. 

Option 3: Though the author is aware of the limitedness of her knowledge, she is confident and can hold her own in a crowd. She is also proud of her roots in the small town. 

Option 4: All the above 

Answer: Though the author feels dated in her access to intellectual ideas, her lack of metropolitan sophistication lets her engage with the ideas with some originality

Passage 2

Until the Keeladi site was discovered, archaeologists by and large believed that the Gangetic plains in the north urbanised significantly earlier than Tamil Nadu. Historians have often claimed that large-scale town life in India first developed in the Greater Magadha region of the Gangetic basin. This was during the ‘second urbanisation’ phase. The ‘first urbanisation phase’ refers to the rise of the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation. Tamil Nadu was thought to have urbanised at this scale only by the third century BCE. The findings at Keeladi push that date back significantly. ... Based on linguistics and continuity in cultural legacies, connections between the Indus Valley Civilisation, or IVC, and old Tamil traditions have long been suggested, but concrete archaeological evidence remained absent. Evidence indicated similarities between graffiti found in Keeladi and symbols associated with the IVC. It bolstered the arguments of dissidents from the dominant North Indian imagination, who have argued for years that their ancestors existed contemporaneously with the IVC. ... All the archaeologists I spoke to said it was too soon to make definitive links between the Keeladi site and the IVC. There is no doubt, however, that the discovery at Keeladi has changed the paradigm. In recent years, the results of any new research on early India have invited keen political interest, because proponents of Hindu nationalism support the notion of Vedic culture as fundamental to the origins of Indian civilisation. ... The Keeladi excavations further challenge the idea of a single fountainhead of Indian life. They indicate the possibility that the earliest identity that can recognisably be considered ‘Indian’ might not have originated in North India. That wasn’t all. In subsequent seasons of the Keeladi dig, archaeologists discovered that Tamili, a variant of the Brahmi script used for writing inscriptions in the early iterations of the Tamil language, could be dated back to the sixth century BCE, likely a hundred years before previously thought. So not only had urban life thrived in the Tamil lands, but people who lived there had developed their own script. “The evolution of writing is attributed to Ashoka’s edicts, but 2600 years ago writing was prevalent in Keeladi,” Mathan Karuppiah, a proud Madurai local, told me. “A farmer could write his own name on a pot he owned. The fight going on here is ‘You are not the one to teach me to write; I have learnt it myself.’ [Excerpted from “The Dig”, by Sowmiya Ashok, Fifty-Two] 

Q1. What was the assumption about the origin of urban life in India before the Keeladi dig?

Option 1: The origins lay in the northern Gangetic plains, which urbanised earlier than the south. 

Option 2: The Indus Valley Civilization was the first urban civilization of India. 

Option 3: The second urbanization was known to be in the Magadha Empire. 

Option 4: Both (A) and (B) 

Answer: The origins lay in the northern Gangetic plains, which urbanised earlier than the south 

Q2. “The Keeladi excavations further challenge the idea of a single fountainhead of Indian life.” — In elaboration of this sentence, which of these options follows?

Option 1: Dominant theories of how urban and modern life came about in ancient India were proved wrong by the Keeladi archaeological dig. 

Option 2: Neither the Indus Valley Civilization nor the ancient urban civilization of Magadha is a clear explanation of how urban life emerged in the Keeladi region of southern India in the third century BCE. 

Option 3: The Keeladi archaeological dig proved that Indian urban and modern life emerged independently in several historical periods and geographies, and no one theory is enough to explain it. 

Option 4: None of the above 

Answer: The Keeladi archaeological dig proved that Indian urban and modern life emerged independently in several historical periods and geographies, and no one theory is enough to explain it.

Q3. Language, including a script similar to the Brahmi script, emerged in Keeladi in the sixth century BCE. Which of the following is the most convincing conclusion from this statement?

Option 1: Keeladi is a centre of culture and learning far superior to any others in ancient India. 

Option 2: People of Keeladi were illiterate and could not use language to inscribe on their pots and pans. 

Option 3: Ancient urban history of India, as we know it today, could significantly be altered by the findings of the advances achieved by the Keeladi civilization. 

Option 4: All of the above 

Answer: Ancient urban history of India, as we know it today, could significantly be altered by the findings of the advances achieved by the Keeladi civilization.

Q4. BCE is the acronym for:

Option 1: Before the Common Era 

Option 2: Before Colloquial Era 

Option 3: Before Chapel Eternal 

Option 4: Behind Christ Era 

Answer: Before the Common Era

Q5. “A farmer could write his own name on a pot he owned. The fight going on here is ‘You are not the one to teach me to write; I have learnt it myself.’ — These sentences imply:

Option 1: That the Keeladi civilization was an egalitarian one. 

Option 2: That the Keeladi civilization did not restrict access to education and literacy only for the elite. 

Option 3: That the farmers of the Keeladi civilization were also potters. 

Option 4: All of the above 

Answer: That the Keeladi civilization did not restrict access to education and literacy only for the elite.