The Law and Society Committee of the National Law School of India University successfully organised the inaugural edition of the National Legislation Review Competition, a first of its kind in India on January 6. 

Keeping in mind the critical significance of legislations in dealing with social problems, the concept of holding a legislation review completion was hatched so as to provide students a first-hand experience of analysing and understanding the various dimensions of legislation making.

The theme chosen was tobacco and its pernicious effect and the participants were asked to review all the legislations in this context. The major emphasis was on the Cigarettes and other tobacco Products (Prohibition of advertisement and regulation of trade and commerce, production, supply and distribution) Act, 2003 which is yet to be implemented.

Anti-tobacco drive

The competition was held in active collaboration with Hriday-Shan Delhi, and is a bright example of academia-civil society partnership. Hriday-Shan has been spearheading the anti-tobacco drive in the country and is closely connected with the Bloomberg Initiative for Tobacco Free Kids, a movement spanning fifteen countries with high incidence of tobacco use.

 The competition comprised of two rounds-written submissions and oral rounds. There was an overwhelming response from all the law colleges in India for the written round. However only the teams from NALSAR, ILS Pune (3 teams) GNLU (2 teams) made it to the top six to be eligible for the oral rounds.

Criterion on which the participants were marked were critical evaluation of the legislations with specific regard to the constitutional tussle  between the Right To Life and the Right To Trade and Profession, implementation challenges, ingenuity as regards proposing amendments or a draft bill, and advocacy skills.

On legal and constitutional issues

The panel of judges was constituted keeping in mind the various aspects of the problem. Justice Gururajan retired judge of the Karnataka high court grilled the students on legal and constitutional issues, while Dr Thelma Narayan, Health Policy adviser to the Government of Karnataka quizzed them on how the framework of the Panchayati Raj could be expanded to include the anti tobacco campaign. Amit Yadav, the legal officer of Hriday Shan and Dr Patricia Lambert, the Director of the International Legal Consortium posed stunning questions as regards logical consistency in their arguments and implementation issues.

After battling the gruelling oral rounds the teams were left a bit exhausted but immensely satisfied at being able to present their views before the judges.

Although it was a closely fought match,  ILS Pune made a clean sweep of the awards with team A walking away with the top prize and team B clinching the runners- up, cash awards of Rs10000 and 5000 respectively. Team B also won the best written submission award of Rs 5000.  

The Law and Society Committee, always a frontrunner in coming up with novel concepts geared at making law as an instrument of social change is planning to organise the competition on a much larger scale from next year onwards.