4th Justice Gopalji Mehrotra National Moot Court Competition 2026 at S.S. Khanna Girls' Degree College, Prayagraj (Nov 12-13; Winner Rs 2,00,000; Register by Sep 10)

S.S. Khanna Girls' Degree College, Prayagraj is a constituent college of the University of Allahabad, founded in 1975 by Ram Kishore Khanna, Shyam Narayan Kapoor, S.N. Kakkar and Prof. D.D. Khanna to advance the education of girl students. The college has been graded 'A' by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council in its last two five-year cycles, for 2014-19 and 2020-25. It runs five undergraduate faculties, including the B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) five-year integrated law course, along with postgraduate programmes in Arts and Science and doctoral research. The college is run by the Saraswat Khatri Pathshala Society, established in 1921 by Lala Sadan Lal Khanna and Sanwaldas Khanna, which now operates four educational institutions.

The Saroj Lalji Mehrotra Centre of Legal Studies, which hosts the competition, was established at the college for the five-year integrated law degree. It owes its existence to Sar-La Education Trust, Mumbai, set up in 1982 by Saroj and Lalji Mehrotra, which contributed Rs 50 lakh towards capital expenditure and sponsors the winner and runner-up prize money every year.

The competition is named after Justice Gopalji Mehrotra, born in 1904, who took part in the freedom struggle and was imprisoned twice. He practised at the Allahabad High Court, was elevated as a judge there in May 1954, was transferred to the Gauhati High Court in November 1957, and served as Chief Justice of Assam and Nagaland from June 1961 until February 1967.

The fourth edition is organised in collaboration with Chandhiok & Mahajan, a law firm with offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. SCC Online is the exclusive Knowledge Partner and SCC Times the exclusive Media Partner. The moot problem for this year was framed by Deeksha Manchanda (LL.M., University of Oxford), Partner at Chandhiok & Mahajan.

The oral rounds will be held on 12 and 13 November 2026 at the college campus at 179-D Attarsuiya, Prayagraj 211003, Uttar Pradesh.

The problem is set in Technoterra, a fictional South-East Asian republic whose legal system mirrors Indian law, including a Competition Act, 2002 and a Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Nexus Digital Inc., which operates the messaging platform ChatFlow with over 450 million users, refused a user's demands for real-time data portability to a rival platform, MsgPro, and for erasure of five years of behavioural metadata, location logs and diagnostic telemetry.

The Competition Commission of Technoterra formed a prima facie view of abuse of dominance under Sections 4(2)(a)(i) and 4(2)(c) and ordered a Director General investigation. The Data Protection Board separately took suo motu cognizance under Section 27 of the DPDP Act. Facing parallel regulatory proceedings, Nexus filed a writ petition under Article 226 seeking to quash both.

The three issues framed for final hearing are:

• Whether the Competition Commission has jurisdiction over data-related practices, or whether the DPDP Act operates as a special law (lex specialis) that displaces it.
• Whether the statutory right to erasure under Section 12 of the DPDP Act encompasses an absolute right to be forgotten, and whether the Data Protection Board may mandate it.
• Whether a refusal to transfer or delete data can amount to an abuse of dominance.

Participants may frame additional issues for the consideration of the court. Requests for clarification must relate to the facts of the proposition and not to substantive arguments; the organisers may decline any clarification they consider irrelevant, and reserve the right to alter or add to the proposition with advance notice to registered teams.

The competition is open to students currently enrolled in a five-year integrated course in law at an institution officially recognised by the Bar Council of India.

• Each institution may send only one team.
• Cross-institutional and mixed-team participation is not allowed.
• Each team must consist of exactly three members: two speakers and one researcher.
• Teams must submit a bona fide letter issued by the Head of the Institution authorising them to participate on its behalf. The provisional registration form requires a No Objection Letter from the institution to be uploaded, with a maximum file size of 10 MB.
• Team composition cannot be changed once registration is complete.
• Each team must nominate a Primary Point of Contact. All communication from the organisers goes to the POC, who is responsible for passing information and materials to the rest of the team. Any change in contact details must be notified immediately.

Provisional registration is free and is made through the organisers' Google Form. The form asks for the institution name and state, the names, email addresses and WhatsApp numbers of both speakers and the researcher, the name and contact of the faculty in-charge, the POC details, and an uploaded No Objection Letter from the institution.

The live registration form and the brochure both state that provisional registration closes on 10 September 2026. Note that Rule 8 of the Rule Book gives the provisional registration cut-off as 10:00 p.m. IST on 15 September 2026. Teams should treat 10 September 2026 as the operative date and register early rather than rely on the later figure.

Teams receive an email confirming successful registration within 48 hours, along with a Unique Identification Code (UIC). Incomplete forms will not be accepted. Apart from the UIC, teams must not display the name or logo of their institution in any communication with the organisers or in any material submitted for the competition.

There is no fee at the provisional stage. The 16 teams shortlisted after the memorial selection round must pay a registration fee of Rs 3,000 per team by 10:00 p.m. IST on 1 November 2026, to Account No. 86152010033935, IFSC CNRB0018615, Saraswat Khatri Pathsala Branch, in the name of the Principal, S.S. Khanna Girls' Degree College. The link for final registration is made available only to teams qualifying for the oral rounds.

Each team must submit memorials for both the Petitioner and the Respondent in PDF format by 10:00 p.m. IST on 10 October 2026, emailed to justicegopaljimehrotranmcc@gmail.com with the subject line "Memorial Submission (UIC)". No submission will be accepted after that date, and the organisers are not responsible for non-receipt of soft copies.

• Memorials must be printed on A-4 paper in black ink and neatly bound, with margins of at least one inch on all sides.
• The memorial must not exceed 30 typed pages excluding the cover page, and must contain a Cover Page (blue for Petitioner, red for Respondent), Table of Contents, Index of Authorities, List of Abbreviations, Statement of Jurisdiction, Written Pleadings and Prayer.
• The cover page must carry the UIC in the upper right-hand corner, the name of the competition, the name of the case, the party represented and the name of the forum.
• Body text and footnotes must be in Times New Roman, size 12 with 1.5 line spacing, footnotes in size 10. All citations must follow The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 21st edition.
• One mark is deducted for each page over the 30-page limit and 0.5 marks for each objective error, deducted once from the total memorial score.
• Plagiarism must not exceed 20 per cent, excluding standard legal citations, statutory provisions and cover page details, as assessed by the organising committee using standard detection software.
• Excessive use of generative AI tools or automated text generators to frame, draft or assist any part of the arguments or memorial is prohibited. Memorials must be authored entirely by the registered team members.

The 16 shortlisted teams must send five hard copies each of the Petitioner and Respondent memorials by 5 November 2026 to the Principal, S.S. Khanna Girls' Degree College, 179-D Attarsuiya Road, Prayagraj 211003, with the envelope marked "Memorial Submission for 4th Justice Gopalji Mehrotra National Moot Court Competition". Any team wishing to submit a compendium must do so by 11:59 p.m. IST on 9 November 2026 by email; compendiums must remain anonymous and carry no institutional name, logo or emblem.

The competition has two stages: a Memorial Selection Round and the Oral Rounds. Memorials are marked out of 100 by a panel of judges, and the top 16 teams by the average of their Petitioner and Respondent scores advance. Memorials are scored on application of facts (25 per cent), reasoning (25 per cent), use of authorities and precedents (25 per cent), understanding of law and procedure (15 per cent) and presentation (10 per cent).

The oral rounds consist of the Round of 16, Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals and the Final. Teams get 35 minutes in the Round of 16, Quarter-Finals and Semi-Finals, capped at 20 minutes per speaker, and 50 minutes in the Final, capped at 30 minutes per speaker, inclusive of pleadings and rebuttal. Judges may extend time by up to five minutes per team at their discretion. Sides are decided by draw of lots each round, the eight highest-scoring teams advance to the Quarter-Finals, and the Quarter-Finals onwards are knock-out. Oral rounds are scored equally, at 20 per cent each, on justification of arguments advanced in the memorial, response to questions and articulation, use of authorities and precedents, reasoning in the application of principles, and application of facts, advocacy skills, court craft and demeanour.

• Only the researcher registered at the time of formal registration may sit the Researcher's Test, which covers the moot proposition and the applicable law.
• Scouting in any form is strictly forbidden and attracts immediate disqualification at the organisers' discretion.
• The dress code is professional business attire, strictly black and white, and the language of the court is English.
• No electronic devices, including laptops, tablets and mobile phones, may be used by team members during a round.
• Participants must certify the originality of their memorials, and the organisers have the right to publicly display and distribute them.

The organisers provide accommodation to all participating teams for two nights and three days, along with local transport between the place of accommodation and the competition venue.

Every participant receives one month's access to the SCC Online Web Edition, valued at Rs 3,100 each. Each member of the winning team additionally receives a one-year complimentary subscription to the SCC Online Web Edition, worth Rs 32,000 each.

The organisers reserve the right to disqualify teams for deviating from the rules, will resolve any contingencies that arise, and are the final arbiters on any doubts or grievances. The published rules are not exhaustive.