Visakhapatnam: Moot courts help students improve oratory skills, says GITAM Vice-Chancellor K Sivaramakrishna

Visakhapatnam: A four-day national moot court competition on Space Law commenced at GITAM Deemed to be University here on Thursday. Organised by GITAM School of Law Moot and Advocacy Committee (GMAC), the event is being held in the name of the late founder-president of the institution M V V S Murthi.

Teams from leading law schools like NUSRL-Ranchi, RGNUL-Patiala, DSNLU-Visakhapatnam, HNLU-Raipur, NLU-Odisha, School of Excellence Chennai, Symbiosis Law School, Dr B R Ambedkar College of Law, Andhra University have participated in the event.

While inaugurating the competition, GITAM Vice-Chancellor K Sivaramakrishna mentioned that moot court was a great platform for the students to develop interpersonal and advocacy skills. He also called for sharpening the competence of legal professionals, ensuring an enabling situation for research and creating legal awareness among common man.

He mentioned that participation in moot court competitions enhances the researching and oratory skills of student at the same time preparing the student to experience reality of a courtroom. DRDO former director, GITAM chief scientist M V K V Prasad said the growth of orbital space debris, missile tests, failures in space experiments and accidents in space were leading to international legal issues.

GITAM School of Law Director Anitha Rao said that the initial stage of space developments has been more in terms of scientific activities, but the commercial use of space was leading new problems. She observed that existing international space treaty regime was inadequate to deal with manifold nuances of space activities. She informed that GITAM Law School was planning to prepare a draft Visakhapatnam declaration of 2020 on space laws to send the same to government.