Nine debaters emerge victorious at lively Speak For India Pune leg

PUNE: Nine voices rang with the most conviction at the Pune leg of ‘

Speak for India

’ (Maharashtra edition), held on a lively Friday at the Neville Wadia Institute here.

These nine, from a field of 96 participants from Pune, have progressed to the zonal round of the inter-collegiate debate competition, organized jointly by The Times of India and Federal Bank.

A field of 96 participants — mostly college students — engaged each other over two rounds of lively speeches and debates. There are two more editions in two states, with the winners progressing to the finals. On Friday, a round was also held in Nagpur, while a similar event is coming up in Kolhapur.

Once registrations wrapped up in the morning, participants drew their topics through lots, handled by the volunteers. Each participant was given five minutes to prepare to speak extempore on his/her topic — in English, Hindi, or

Marathi

— for a minute.

While most preferred English, several packed quite the punch in Marathi on topics including freedom of expression, Saudi Arabia in upheaval, the Padmavati controversy and the push by some governments to make yoga compulsory in schools and colleges.

The extempore round threw up 26 performers, who then proceeded to a debate round. they were split into groups of four, and one group of six.

The judges picked nine winners — Praveen Ashok Shinde (Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth), Vipul Shantaram Dhangar (SP College), Pushkar Marathe (Vishwakarma Institute of Technology),

Ankit Mishra

(MM Law College), Vaibhav Mehta (Poona College of Pharmacy), Siddhi Shah (MIT World Peace University), Gitika Singh (BMCC), Aryan Birewar and Hitika Gupta (both from Symbiosis College).

In fact, Ankit Mishra was a national finalist last time around. “Most debates are very compartmentalized on language, but I speak Hindi at home, and I know Marathi as well because I have lived here all my life. So I was very comfortable in this format,” Mishra said. Another round will be held at the same venue on November 29.