University of Colombo wins the 5th Indian National Law School Parliamentary Debate Championships

Dear all,

A couple of gifted young law students did Sri Lanka proud recently, "talking" their way through, right to the top, at a reputed debating tournament held last month. Organised by the National Law School of India University, the 5th annual National Law School Parliamentary Debate, which is India's largest and most prestigious debating championship, took place in Bangalore Recently.. Apart from the teams from Sri Lanka, there were teams from Madras, Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Pune participating.

With a total of 30 teams participating in the competition, two teams from Law Faculty and one from Royal Institute made up the three local teams going in. Defeating team after team, and getting through each preliminary, team 'A', the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, emerged the overall winners of the competition. Comprising five rounds of debate on various subjects, the participants had literally a few minutes to prepare their arguments.

Niran Anketell (23), Anisha Yasaratne (22) and Kumaravadivel Guruparan (21) made up team 'A,' which emerged the winners. "The parliamentary style of debating is what is used in competitions such as these and each round has an assigned subject for debate," said Niran, a final year student of the Faculty of Law University of Colombo, and the captain of the winning team. He is also the present President of the Moot Court and Debating Society of the Faculty of Law. According to him, the topics given for each preliminary round were based on various subjects, such as press, education policy, international affairs, sports and bribery and corruption. He added that they got just about 15-20 minutes to prepare for each debate.

Participating in such competitions encourages students to read up in depth on contemporary issues and this brings about an interest in socially relevant areas," added Anisha. Realising the importance of mooting and debating as students of law, especially after the Asian debating tournament last year, the Faculty of Law organised the Open Debating Championship in August this year and also a Parliamentary style debating competition for schools in February.

Regards,
Rashedul Hasan Stalin