2nd Indian Vis Pre-moot held at NALSAR Ten teams attend with NALSAR eventually defeating NLS by margin of 3-2 in finals

The 2nd Indian Vis Premoot, sponsored by Bharucha and Partners was organized over the week at NALSAR, Hyderabad. The event saw the participation of 10 teams from across the country. The moot served as a practice for teams headed to Vienna and Hong Kong for the Willem C Vis International Commercial Arbitration moot and Vis (East) moot respectively. NALSAR’s team of Jagdish Menezes, Ridhi Kabra and Isihita Bharadwaj won the pre-moot, defeating NLS by a margin of 3-2 in the finals..The pre-moot was conceptualized last year by the NALSAR Vis team and the NUJS Moot Court Committee. Indian teams often find it hard to attend practice moots in Europe to prepare for the rounds and hence a domestic practice moot was seen as an ideal solution..Keeping with the aim of the event, it was structured to simulate the Vis experience. Teams were required to argue 4 rounds on Saturday and the top 4 teams progressed to the semi finals. In the semi finals, NALSAR beat NLU-Delhi and NLS beat GNLU to take on each other in the finals..The finals were judged by a 5-judge panel consisting of Vis alumni and practitioners. Mithun Thanks (member of the NUJS team that won the Vis moot in 2003) presided as Chair and was assisted by Anirudh Krishnan (editor, Bachawat on Indian and International Arbitration), V Niranjan (honourable Mention at Vis and Rhodes Scholar), Shraddha Deshmukh and Sneha Jain (members of the ILS team that lost in the finals of the Vis moot in 2009)..Kunal Chaturvedi of GNLU was awarded the Best Speaker and Esha Goel of GNLU and Jagdish Menezes of NALSAR were joint second best speakers. Shiv Santosh of NLS, Ishita Bharadwaj of NALSAR and Akshaya Ramadurai of NLS received Honourable Mentions..Menezes who was part of the winning NALSAR team, told Bar & Bench that the pre-moot had been a “…great opportunity for all the Indian teams to practice. I think it’s really important, considering that the Vis Moot has no Indian Rounds. We had the opportunity to get some fresh perspectives too, especially from the judges.”.(This report was prepared by Nalsar student Puneeth Nagaraj. More photos on the event can be found here)