Over 90 North Indian teams battle it out for top prize at ConQuest

After an intensive quiz of five rounds, Ramjas College emerges as the winner. ThePrint is the digital partner of ConQuest.

ConQuest 2019, in its fourth edition this year, has been organised by the Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bengaluru

New Delhi: Professor K.T. Shah, a member of the first Parliament, would have been a lot more well-known had he not lost an important election to a fellow MP from Bihar.

Which poll did he exactly lose?

The answer: First presidential elections to Rajendra Prasad.

This was among a range of questions posed to participants of the North Regional round of ConQuest 4.0, India’s premier national quiz on the Indian Constitution, Politics and History,

ConQuest 2019, in its fourth edition this year, has been organised by the Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bengaluru. The North Regional round was held in the National Law University (NLU) in Delhi Saturday where over 90 teams from across North India battled it out for the top prize. The turnout of the North Regionals was the biggest one yet.

Six teams qualified for the final round ­– two teams from NLU, Delhi; two from Campus Law Centre (CLC), Delhi and a team each from Symbiosis Law School, Noida and Ramjas College, Delhi.

After an intensive quiz of five rounds, Ramjas College emerged as the winner with a fairly comfortable margin. The two CLC teams bagged the runners up and second runners up trophies. The top two teams will represent the North region in the national round to be held on 6 September in Bengaluru.

Mix bag of questions

The questions were a diverse mix from the Indian Constitution, Politics and History. This year, the questions were designed with specific reference to several historical documents that influenced the Constitution.

One question was on Pushpa Kapila Hingorani who is known as the ‘Mother of Public Interest Litigation.’ She had filed a petition on behalf of undertrial prisoners in Bihar and her initiative instituted the landmark PIL provision in the Constitution.

Another question was on the kidnappers of Geeta and Sanjay Chopra, the siblings on whom the National Bravery awards are named. This incident had a powerful impact on freedom of speech due to a petition filed by journalist Prabha Dutt.

What was this petition filed?

The answer: It was a plea to interview convicts on death row. This petition had paved the way for death row convicts to be interviewed for the first time.

But none of the six teams could get this answer right.

Ramjas and CLC won the first and second prizes comfortably after the final buzzer round. NLUD and CLC fought for the third position with a tie-breaker question and the latter emerged as a winner.

ConQuest 2019 was conducted the South, East and West Regional Rounds in the previous month. It is all set to conduct the National Round on 6 September in Bengaluru.

ThePrint is a digital partner for ConQuest 2019.