Students from AIL participated in the 8th edition of Christ University Parliamentary Debate 2016, which was organised from 19th to 21st February at Christ University, Bangalore. The speaker team comprised of Aman Venugopal (1st year), Trisha Sharma (1st year), and Virinda (1st year). The event was attended by over 40 teams, coming from various parts of the country, and included top-notch National Law Schools, IITs, and other renowned colleges. The adjudication core panel consisted of some great names in the debating circles, like Soutik Banerjee, Aniruddha Basu, and Rashid Sharif. After winning three out of five preliminary rounds, the team then proceeded to be paired up against the team from ILS, Pune. After winning the semi- finals against ILS, the team was then paired against NLIU Bhopal in the finals, and finally emerged out victorious in the Novice Breaks. The motions were well balanced and fostered a healthy discussion between the teams with themes such as security, justice, education, hypotheticals. Some of the crowd favourites included “This house believes that batman should give government full access to Wayne Enterprises Applied Sciences Division”, “This house will ban official youth wings of organised political parties from participating in varsity student politics” and “This house will give convicts a right to choose moral enhancement drugs in exchange of reduced sentence”. It was an intellectually charged atmosphere where students held discussions about socially and politically relevant issues civilly. In the end, the winning Novice team was presented with a trophy and certificates by the Christ University’s patron of debating society, Father Benny Thomas. All in all, it wasn’t only a great platform to showcase their talents, the participants learnt a great deal about debating.
