A thing that brings all the aspirants of the University of Delhi (DU) in this country to a sense of fascination is the University’s engagement with the performing arts. With a plethora of opportunities in fields like dance, music, dramatic, debating, students are exposed to the discipline and the adventure of the arts that interest them. DU Beat brings to you, a ranking of the top debating societies in the circuit. The hard work was persistent, and the competition heartening. Let’s delve into who made the cut and how.
Before we immerse into this list, it becomes pertinent to acknowledge the difficulties faced by all colleges and societies this fest season. 2020 came with its obstacles and hardships, which also impacted the year-round dedication of our University’s college students. DU Beat applauds all societies for all the efforts they have in for this year.
Methodology
The best college society in each category was selected by creating a tally of the top 3 positions that could be won at various events. The team that secured the 1st position (winners) was awarded 3 points and the team that secured the 2nd position (finalist) was awarded 2 points. The best adjudicator and the second-best adjudicators were allotted 3 and 2 points each, respectively.
16 DU college competitions were considered in the making of the tally. The selection of these 16 competitions was based upon an analysis done by speaking with members of numerous college societies and tracking the competitions they considered most prestigious. The considered college competitions are limited to only colleges affiliated with DU:
| College of Vocational Studies |
| Dyal Singh College |
| Daulat Ram College |
| Delhi College of Arts and Commerce |
| Deen Dyal Upadhyay College |
| Guru Gobind Singh College – Freshers |
| Hansraj College |
| Hindu College – Premchand |
| Janki Devi Memorial |
| Kirori Mal College – Seniors |
| Kirori Mal College – Freshers |
| Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies |
| Sri Venkateswara College |
| Shaheed Bhagat Singh College |
| Shri Ram College of Commerce – Freshers |
| St Stephen’s College – Freshers |
Points Tally: Debating
The English Debating Society, Hindu College, tied with CBS Debating Society, Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, bagged the first position securing 25 points. The Debating Society, Shri Ram College of Commerce, followed at the second position with 18 points. The Revolutionists of Shaheed Bhagat Singh College was placed at the third position with 16 points.
Top Three Positions
Winning Societies at a Glance
CBS Debating Society
In the words of Archit Dikshit, President of CBS Debating Society, “It’s quite difficult to be an off-campus college having no or limited debating legacy and still achieve what we have achieved. I credit the success of this society to 35+ members who worked throughout the year. It comes in many forms; we stay back after 5 PM lectures to train ourselves and share whatever knowledge we have and try showing up for every tournament despite strict attendance policies just so that we can improve ourselves.
It’s not easy to argue politics and society if you study accounts and economics half the day, yet we take it as a challenge to know about topics that other colleges spend 3 years studying and try our best to throw “business school arguments with a tinge of society and it’s multiple stakeholders”. This year, despite having a limited number of tournaments to our avail we were able to win 6 tournaments and we are extremely proud of the work that has gone behind that. Going forward, it’s just about knowing that the best is yet to come for a society that’s just completed 5 years in existence this academic year.”
Members-
- Archit Dikshit (President)
- Yash Jain (Vice President)
- Tanish Mittal
- Naman Wadhwa
- Ajatshatru Singh Rawat
- Kshitij Bansal
- Rakshit Sinha
- Suraj Chawla
- Devesh Mittal
- Abhi Bansal
- Adittya Dhingra
- Aashish Kumar
- Ayushman Jain
- Dev Goel
- Medha Bhasin
- Muskaan Sharma
- Raghavv Garg
- Samridhh Sharma
- Shreyan Puri
- Satwik Rajput
- Srishti Bhandari
- Samyak Jain
- Rohan Kumar
- Vasu Aggarwal
- Yuganshu Bhagat
- Prabal Aggarwal
- Tvisha Tuli
- Divye Yadav
- Pranjal Swami
- Prakriti Khurana
- Abhinandan Nath
- Madhav Chadha
- Madhav Chadha (CR)
- Divyangi Singh
- Tushar Tiwari
- Sakshi Rai
- Arnav Garg
- Rajat Rawat
- Arshia Dogra
- Ritvik Vasudeva
The English Debating Society
Hindu Debating Society commented on this victory, “Being a part of the DebSoc has definitely been a wholesome experience, to say the least. We’ve all run about organising Premchand and somehow our online intra-Hindu PD tournament has managed to give us a good memory in the quarantine time as well! Over the course of mocks and tournaments and feedback sessions, we’ve watched these people transform from members to friends to family. We’ve watched each other and ourselves grow and learn to think and articulate better, we’ve made jokes about having no life outside of debating, we’ve stood in solidarity supporting stances we believe in, we’ve travelled together and we’ve laughed at old dancing videos and pictures of members together…I think that’s what our journey has been- when we think about debating, it’s no longer just about breaks or wins; it’s now about all these big little things. And I guess that’s why we love Hindu DebSoc!”
Members-
- Aaditya Malhotra
- Aansi Pathak
- Abhinav Shankar Raman
- Abhiraj Ranjan
- Akshat Sharma
- Akshay Chauhan
- Amogh Awasthi
- Anish Mishra
- Bhaskar Vishwajeet
- Eshika Bhatia
- Gauri Ramachandran
- Himani Mehra
- Jatin Jha
- Kalptaru Agarwal
- Kanishk Singh
- Kareema Barry
- Mahira Dasgupta
- Medhansh Bhardwaj
- Nandini Pillai
- Nikita Kochhar
- Prateek Pankaj
- Saachi Chauhan
- Savinay Sharma
- Siddhartha Rai Tandon
- Shreya Mundhra
- Sushovan Chakraborty
- Tanishque Gedam
- Triambika Reddy
- Varenya Vir Singh
- Vinayak Gupta
- Yaksh Handa
- Yakshna Sharma
The Debating Society – SRCC
Pratham Kalra, Secretary, comments, “The Debating Society of SRCC has always focused on learning, growth, commitment, and of course, fostering a love for the activity. From having teams participating in tournaments nearly every weekend, to mocking over weekdays, debating is undoubtedly among the most significant (and arguably enjoyable) part of every DebSoc member’s college experience. Over the course of this year, we’ve had our seniors train juniors through regular knowledge sessions, and we’ve seen our members (across all years) perform exceptionally well in terms of debating and adjudication breaks in several tournaments. We’ve hosted our own fresher tournament – Gambit and taken initiatives like organising conventional debates within college in collaboration with the Women’s Development Cell. Of course, since our commitment to the activity goes far beyond the four walls of college, we haven’t let the lockdown come in the way of participating in tournaments, continuing to organise our own mocks, knowledge sessions taken by imminent debaters and reaching out to other colleges to debate with them as well. This society has helped us evolve and it has been an enriching experience!”
The Revolutionists
Sista Srinivas, President of the Revolutionists, SBSC Debating Society, comments, “You know you’ve made an impact when a third party asks you to write about yourself” this isn’t a quote by some famous person or from a book, rather it is, or we feel like it is, a self-devised motto of our society with which we began this year. We are a new society, with this being our 4th year of existence, and in comparison, with other societies who literally have 3rd and 4th generation members of the same lineage we feel like we have accomplished at least one thing, recognition. The journey of the same, like any journey was full of ups and downs with the latter being the central focus because of our nature as human beings, and our particular nature as a pessimistic group of people. However, like any cliché this is what drove us to not give up and keep going for tournaments. The idea was simple- do it till you win it, and we did, three years after being established, we finally started winning, if not anything this write up and the request for the same by DU Beat is evidence that we’re probably doing it right. As President of The Revolutionists, I like to draw my parallels to Pandit Nehru, we know we have a long way to go, but the start is phenomenal. This write up is low on modesty, but that doesn’t take away from our constant desire to improve and learn. This year we took the third position in the tally, come next year we are only going to be at the top of the podium by a margin that’ll require others to not take us lightly and force them to be on their toes, if this isn’t enough, I’d like to explicitly say that I am super proud of these group of people who I know will take the society to greater heights than ever.”
Story Credits: Ajay Pal
Data Analysis and Compilation by
Aditi Gutgutia
Sakshi Arora
Shivani Dadhwal
