In CLAT counselling, which begins after the declaration of results, aspirants are allotted colleges. Such allotment depends on the preference list which you’re required to fill along with the CLAT admission form, and also on the cut off marks of a particular college in that particular year.
After the allotment of such college, you either ‘lock’ that college or you don’t. In case you do, then you can’t change your option and you necessarily have to take admission in that college.
However, if you don’t lock it, you’re again up for the allotment of college according to your scores. There’s a chance that you might get allotted the same college again in the subsequent counsellings, and there’s a chance that you might move higher up the ladder and be allotted a better college which is more desirable to you according to your preference list.
NLUs mostly have a maximum of four counselling sessions, but only those seats are up for the grabs in subsequent counsellings sessions which haven’t been locked yet. Depending upon the vacancies post counselling sessions, vacanct seats are also released for which students can apply through a prescribed procedure.