NLU, Delhi wins D.M. Harish Moot

The 2-year old National Law University, Delhi came of age with their first-ever moot court competition win. The team took home the 2010 D.M. Harish Memorial Government Law College Moot Court Competition after beating Indian Law Society, Pune. Held every year in the honour of tax law expert, Late D.M Harish, by Mumbai’s Government Law College, the moot is sponsored by the D.M. Harish Foundation.

This year’s competition kicked off with a panel discussion on "Criminal acts of the State under the guise of protecting nations from acts of terrorism". The panelists included members like activist, Teesta Setalvad, U.S. Vice Counsel, Beth Brownson and Member of Parliament, Sandeep Dixit, amongst others.

Of the 27 colleges/universities that took part, NLU, Delhi, Nalsar, Hyderabad, ILS Pune and Kings University, UK, qualified for the semi-final round.

Surprisingly, despite having been the overall winner, NLU did not pick any individual prizes. Prateek Bagaria from the host college won the best advocate award with Jeff Hansford from the University of Kent running a close second. The GLC, Mumbai team beat NLSIU, Bangalore to win the Best Memorial award. Nalsar University's Anusha Sinha won the best researcher award with University of Mauritius’ Sandilen Callipen coming second.

The finalists were grilled by an esteemed panel of judges which included, Justice F.I. Rebello, Justice P.B. Majmudar, Justice V.C. Daga, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice V.K. Tahilramani. The winning team comprising entirely of II year students had Akshay Bagartet, Shreya Rastogi as speakers, and Ankit Chauhan as the researcher.

Akshay told Bar & Bench, “The win was unexpected as we were the least experienced team and the problem also presented us with unique challenges, due to the unavailability of authorities on the topic of States being responsible for the actions of non-state actors.”