Crossfire, the English Debating Society of Kamala Nehru College organised the very first edition of Munaazrah, the annual parliamentary debate tournament from 21st to 23rd March, 2015. The event saw 26 teams from all over India debating over motions carefully constructed as per today’s relevance.
The Core Adjudicators for Munaazrah ’15 were Yash S. Vijay, a Human Rights lawyer from NLIU, Bhopal; Achitha Jacob who hails from IIT Bombay and Vardhan Bhatia, a former DU student. Day 1 focused on the Adjudicator test that determined the members on the adjudication panel and trainee adjudicators for the upcoming rounds and 2 debate rounds.
The motions for all rounds followed a specific theme that ranged from ‘Humans of New York’ based contextual motions to motions on Indian Polity. All thirteen match-ups were observed defending their stance with utmost zeal. Intelligence and wit at its best, calls of ‘hear, hear!’ and ‘POI, sir!’ added to the atmosphere.
Day 2 kick-started after a short delay on account of release in tabs. Round 3 and Round 4 were organised on Day 2. The organising committee left no stone unturned in attempting to adhere to the schedule. However, due to the unexpected delay earlier in the day, the last preliminary round was postponed to the next day.
Round 5 began at the early hour of 23rd March. The participants and organising committee members were strikingly punctual despite the early start to the day. The qualifying teams and adjudicators were announced in the afternoon following which the quarter-finals began. The semi-finals between the cross teams- ‘Jai Mata Di Let’s Rock!!’ and ‘#We Won’t Give It Back’; and Hindu College Team-B versus the cross-team ‘Mauka Mauka’ was a closed round. ‘Jai Mata Di Let’s Rock!!’ and ‘ Mauka Mauka’ made it to the finals.
The adjudicators decided to keep a single motion for the finals- ‘This House regrets Nationalism’. Team ‘Mauka Mauka’ represented side government while team ‘Jai Mata Di let’s Rock!!!’ represented side opposition. After a 4-1 split, ‘Jai Mata Di Let’s Rock!!!’ comprising Siddhartha Thyagarajan, Ira Regmi and Arunesh Karkun were declared the winners. Jagat Sohail, Soutik Banerjee and Akash Pattanayak from ‘Mauka Mauka’ were the proud runners up. With this, Anirban and John Biju were declared the best adjudicators.
The three-day event ended on a short vote of thanks by one of the CA’s Vardhan Bhatia wherein he acknowledged the relentless efforts of the debating society in organising Munaazrah along with thanking the participants for their co-operation and support.
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