Gujarat and Delhi students emerge winners in ConQuest national quiz finals

Winners of the India's premier national quiz competition ConQuest, held in Bengaluru | Rohini Swamy/ ThePrint

Bengaluru played host to two of the editions on the same day, first the south regional round and then the finals.

Bengaluru: Did you know that there was a certain “right” that was sought to be introduced by two senior members of our Constituent Assembly while framing the Constitution but was later abandoned? It was called the ‘Right to Recall’, aimed at empowering Indian citizens to recall their legislators if they had failed to deliver.

This was one of the questions that the young minds at the third edition of ConQuest, India’s premier national quiz competition, answered with ease.

ConQuest was organised by the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR), in association with ThePrint, across four zones in the country. Bengaluru played host to two of the editions on the same day, first the south regional round and then the finals.

Nerve-wrecking and challenging as it was for the contestants, the audience too was not the ones to give up easily. They swiftly tackled questions that the contestants couldn’t answer, including identifying on whom the biopic On the basis of Sex was made and which President of India was related to Dakshayani Velayudhan, India’s only Dalit woman to be a part of the making of the Constitution.

The southern regional round had six teams, represented by students from the National Law School India University, University of Hyderabad, Christ University School of Law, IIT Madras and Faculty of Law, PES. After a tough fight, NLSIU and Christ University School of Law sailed into the finals.

Finally, eight colleges fought for the top spot. Anand Kumar and Abhinabha Sarkar of Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) secured the top position; Abhishek Paliwal and Ashish Singh of Ramjas College, Delhi came second, and Ankur Raj and Aditya Singh of Campus Law Centre, Delhi University walked away with the third prize.

CLPR, in association with Walnut Knowledge Solutions, a Bengaluru-based quizzing company, worked on framing some of the most intriguing and out-of-the-box questions for the competition.

For instance, one would wonder what southern megastar Rajinikanth had to do with our Constitution. The answer is B.R. Ambedkar. A dialogue from his movie Kaala, “Katrivai Patravai” (educate, agitate) was inspired from Ambdekar’s famous slogan “educate, agitate, organise; have faith in yourself”.

Aimed at engaging the youth in understanding policy affairs and reaffirming India’s rich political history, the quiz engaged those present with developments of the past and present. One such example was a question on adultery — whether it was legal in India or not. Then came the question on the list of official languages of India, which almost left the participants tongue-tied.

The chief guest of the event, Prof. Babu Mathew, former registrar of NLSIU, said it’s as important to understand the political developments as how nations have drafted their Constitutions. “Our Constitution is so exhaustive and relevant, that there is no country in South Asia that has withstood the test of time, like ours has,” he said.