Event Details

VIRANGA 2024

FROM 26 Jan 2024 TO 26 Jan 2024

Venue : SMIT @

In honour of India's 75th Republic Day, the Literary and Debate Society of the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, better known as Reverbs SMIT, officially organised Viranga 2024, a trilingual debate competition, on the 26th of January, 2024, at the Multipurpose Hall, F-Block, on SMIT's campus.

EVENT REPORT

BRIEF DESCRIPTION/REPORT WITH GEO-TAGGED PHOTOGRAPHS OR SCREENSHOTS:

In honour of India's 75th Republic Day, the Literary and Debate Society of the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, better known as Reverbs SMIT, officially organised Viranga 2024, a trilingual debate competition, on the 26th of January, 2024, at the Multipurpose Hall, F-Block, on SMIT's campus. The objective of the competition was to inspire fresh, new perspectives from the competitors, who were primarily comprised of students in their first year, on the occasion of Republic Day.

The event commenced with the arrival of Prof. (Dr.) N. K. Bhattacharyya, Associate Director (Student Affairs), at the Multipurpose Hall. Not too long after, Prof. (Dr.) Ajeya Jha, Prof. Biraj Upadhyaya, and Prof. Nandan Banerji, who were the event's judges, also honoured the occasion with their esteemed presences. Shortly after that, Prof. Biraj Upadhyaya, who was also one of the main faculty coordinators of the event, addressed the crowd with an inspiring opening speech. This was immediately followed by a welcome speech, delivered by Ms. Torsha Guha, the President of Reverbs, where she addressed the audience and the participants who were present at the opening ceremony.

Prof. (Dr.) N. K. Bhattacharyya proceeded to deliver a motivating speech after this, inspiring all the participants who were present at the venue.

The event kicked off right after, with the thirteen competitors taking their respective seats at the front of the hall. The first round consisted of an Oxford-style debate with the motion: "This House believes that the current state of surveillance in India undermines the citizens' right to privacy and poses significant threats to individual freedoms." 

Participants offered various comprehensive insights on the motion, each one bringing a new perspective to the table. The competition was as cutthroat as can be, with the margins being extremely close to one another. However, as is the case with all competitions, only six participants qualified for the final round.

The final round, even more challenging than the last, was of a slightly different format, more popularly known as a turncoat debate in larger debating circles. In this round, unlike the last, participants were essentially against themselves, in that, they had to challenge their own stances and immediately switch to the opposing stance, as and when the judging panel signalled for them to do so. This round was slightly special in the sense that there were two motions instead of one. The first motion was: "This house is of the opinion that political students' unions should be allowed and nurtured in colleges and universities."  Despite the highly stressful nature of this particular round, all six competitors arose as victors in their own regards, successfully managing to challenge their very own stances.

The second motion was : "This house is of the opinion that media trials are a much better alternative as compared to judicial trials." After an intense twelve minutes, the final round concluded, with all six participants emerging with exhausted but satisfied looks on their faces.  This was followed by a nerve-wracking period of ten minutes, during which the judging panel and the organising committee furiously wrote away on the score sheets. 

Finally, four participants emerged as the victors of the competition, with Mr. Rudraksh Chakraborty and Ms. Brikchana Karki bagging the awards for the two best speakers of the debate, and Mr. Shreyansh Mishra and Mr. Udayan Bhowmick bagging the awards for the two best runner-up speakers of the debate, respectively.The event was wrapped up with an official vote of thanks, delivered by Ms. Adrija Chakrabarti, the General Secretary of the club, bringing the event to an extremely successful conclusion.

Thanks to the constant guidance of Prof. Ish Nath Jha, and Prof. Biraj Upadhyaya, who tirelessly worked for the event behind the scenes, Reverbs was able to pull off the event in an extremely short period of time. Coupled with the swift assistance of the executive team of Reverbs, the event ended as a huge success, officially adding to a new chapter in the history of the debating scene at the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology.