Nalsar Hyderabad is now tied for the lead of the Mooting Premier League (MPL) after defeating ILS Law College Pune in the finals of the 26th Annual Bar Council of India (BCI) Trust Moot Court Competition.

The Nalsar team bagged 10 points for the win of the tier 3 moot, which was organised by Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) last weekend (8 to 10 January 2010).

Nalsar was represented by Rohan Singh and Neharika Malik as orators and Sanjhi Jain and Prabhat Kumar as researchers.

With the win Nalsar would have overtaken NLS Bangalore at the top of the Mooting Premier League. However, NLS Bangalore mooter Krishna Prasad picked up the best orator in the first round for 7 points on the MPL, ensuring NLS and Nalsar are now head-to-head at the top with 46 points each.

ILS Pune has also made a strong entry into the MPL with 7 points in joint 13th place after becoming a finalist at the BCI moot.

Rohan Singh of Nalsar won the best orator of the finals and the best male advocate of the finals. Nalsar's Neharika Malik won the best female advocate of the final round. Bhargav Joshi of NUJS, Kolkata was awarded the best oralist in the second round and Charuhas of ILS Pune was the best oralist in the semis.

Nalsar's Singh had also won the Surana Trial Advocacy Moot in November.

Rohan Singh said: "In my opinion [the BCI Moot] is probably the toughest domestic law moot in India and the most prestigious in my opinion. We had worked hard for nine months, reading a lot of law [and] we had given up our internships in the month of December to prepare."

A total of 30 teams participated in the competition. The first round was a knock out round, out of which 15 teams qualified directly to the second round while the 16th team was a lucky loser.

The second round was also a knock out round wherein eight teams emerged as winners, out of which controversially only the top four teams qualified for the semi final by awarded scores.

"We took it seriously from the beginning but luck is required to break from top 16 to the semis," explained Rohan Singh.

GNLU moot court committee (MCC) convenor Ashish Chandra said: "This was the first time that the BCI moot was held in Gujarat. Organising the moot was a real challenge as the MCC only got around 20-25 days to organize the competition and also the fact that college was closed and students were interning.

"However we still managed to organize a succesful BCI competition," he noted.

The moot participants were made to work on four different problems for each round of the competition in a very short time span of around three weeks.

The winners of the moot competition were also awarded a monthly scholarship of Rs 1,000 for a period of one year in a ceremony presided over by the Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court.

The judges for the final round were Gujarat High Court Judges Justice R.R. Tripathy and Justice A.A.H. Kureshi, as well as BCI chairman S.N.P Sinha, BCI Trust managing trustee Ashok Kumar Deb and GNLU dean of Academic Affairs Shoblata V. Udapuddi.

Chandra also added that this was GNLU first mooting competition this year but that in February the university would also hold its own official moot competition dubbed GIMC 2010, which he said would see participation from teams in Europe, the US and Asia.

Explanation of best orator scoring: Although the BCI moot awards best orator prizes for each round we only allocated points for the best orator in the first round. It is in the first round that competition is fiercest because all 30 teams argue. We are not awarding any points to the best orators of the finals or other rounds since the MPL rules permit points for only one orator in a tier 3 competition. In every other competition, the best orator is also chosen from the preliminary/first round only.