The 8th edition of the Army Institute of Law National Moot Court Competition – CHECKMATE was held from 19th Jan-21st Jan 2018. A total of 39 colleges from all over the country came to participate in the event. As soon as the participants settled into their respective court rooms and the Judges entered, the battle began.
The moot proposition was an extremely interesting one. It was depicted on the recent BLUE WHALE CHALLENGE which had led to the death of children all over the world. There were two preliminary rounds after which 8 out of 39 teams were selected to qualify to the quarters. The participants left quite an impact on the Judges and the Judges had their work cut out for them. With this we came to an end to the first day of the competition.
The next day started with the fiery semi-finals between 4 teams out of which Indian Law Society’s Law College, Pune and Christ University, Bangalore qualified to the finals. A panel of 5 extremely qualified judges was invited to judge the two teams. The panel consisted of Justice Rajan Gupta (Punjab and Haryana High Court), Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill (Punjab and Haryana High Court) , Prof. Johar (Former Vice Chancellor of Agra University) , Mr. Anil Malhotra (Senior Advocate) and Mr. Vikram Choudary (Senior Advocate). The counsel were made to think on their feet given certain questions asked by the judges demanded the same.
The Valedictory Ceremony started shortly after. The Chief Guest for the Ceremony was Hon’ble Mr. Justice Shiavax Jal Vazifdar – Chief Justice Punjab and Haryana High Court. The ceremony started with the welcome speech by the principal followed by words of encouragement and motivation by the Judges and Chief Guest.
After many moments of anticipation the results were declared where Christ University, Bangalore was awarded the winner trophy of Checkmate 2018 with a cash prize of Rs. 50,000. Indian Law Society’s Law College, Pune was awarded the Runner-up trophy. The other awards were as follows- Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai won the Best Memo, followed by Amity Law School, Delhi who won the 2nd Best Memo. The Best Advocates was bagged by Gujarat National Law University. After a long round of cheering and applause the prize distribution ended. The Principal gave the vote of thanks, calling the valedictory ceremony to a close and with that the 8th edition of CHECKMATE 2018 officially came to a fulfilling and successful end.
