Is There Negative Marking in CLAT? Yes, 0.25

Yes. A wrong CLAT answer loses 0.25 marks; a correct answer earns 1 and an unanswered question scores 0. The penalty affects both your score calculation and decisions under time pressure.

Calculate your score

Score = correct answers − 0.25 × wrong answers. For example, 80 correct and 20 wrong gives 75 marks. If the paper has 120 questions, that example leaves 20 unanswered.

The expected value of a guess

For a question with four options and one correct answer, a genuinely random guess has:

(1/4 × 1) + (3/4 × −0.25) = +0.0625 marks per question.

Four such guesses have an expected total of +0.25. They do not guarantee one correct answer: all four could be wrong and lose a mark.

If you correctly eliminate one wrong option and choose equally among three, the expected value is +1/6, approximately +0.167 per question. This is about 2.67 times the blind-guess expectation, not twice.

If you correctly eliminate two wrong options, it becomes +0.375 per question. These calculations assume the correct option remains available.

The general threshold

If your probability of being correct is p, expected marks are 1.25p − 0.25. The expectation is positive when p is above 20%, zero at 20% and negative below it.

You do not know p precisely for an individual question. Confidence can be misplaced, and an incorrect elimination can make matters worse.

What to do in practice

First use time on questions you can answer and mark accurately. When deciding whether to guess, consider remaining time and the uncertainty. Positive expected marks are an average across possible outcomes, not protection against a lower score on this attempt.

Practise elimination using the passage and the question’s exact task. In a question asking for new information that strengthens an argument, an option is not wrong merely because the passage did not already state it.

Do not let last-second guessing disrupt answer-sheet alignment or prevent you from marking secure answers.

Where to go next

Sources and scope

Official references checked on 18 September 2026. Study routines and teaching examples are editorial suggestions, not official requirements.