[CLATGyan had conducted a Blog Post Writing Competition, immediately after CLAT 2012, to transform some of the post-CLAT joblessness into some sort of productivity. We had requested Muhammad Abdaal Akhtar, a fifth year B.A.,LL.B.(Hons.) student of NALSAR University of Law, to judge the competition, for which he happily agreed. We thank him for devoting his valuable time and wish him luck for all his future endeavours.

The competition has been extremely successful with around 200 entries being sent. We had published 64 of those, over the last two months. And with this post, CLATGyan's 2nd season comes to an end. We'll start with CLAT 2013 related posts soon. In the meanwhile, if you have any questions/queries, shoot them at clatgyan@gmail.com. - Asad]

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‘The lack of anything better to do’ probably best explains why I took up Asad’s offer of judging this competition. Almost a month later, I think it was a choice well made. Your articles were sometimes thought provoking, frequently amusing and always interesting. Indian law schools will be lucky to have bright kids like you joining them.

Considering there were no set rules for the competition, I did not have any for judging either. No brownie points were given for writing on issues that happened to incidentally interest me as well. None were deducted for having a viewpoint that incidentally contradicted mine. In short, unless it was something downright offensive or stupid, I can assure you I read it as neutrally as possible. What I was looking for in all the pieces was clarity of thought, command over the language and, for lack of a better word, succinctness. Humour, if required in the context, was appreciated too. All the same, the very process of judging is a subjective one and for certain unavoidable biases, I plead guilty.

Unfortunately there can only be one winner and I found Shreya Bhattacharya’s The Tales of Cycles and Sugar to be a notch above the rest. It takes an otherwise normal event in anyone’s life, draws a huge number of links with seemingly unrelated things and still manages to make sense at the end of it all. What makes it better is the simplicity of the prose. What you write should be intelligible to normal people and not only to Byzantine priests. It may be a trifle too long, but Shreya never lets it sag. My congratulations to her.

Honourable mention must be made of Samyak Sibasish’s piece as also of Sangeetha Kottillil’s O Henry-esque short story. Luckily for the participants, the latter was not submitted for the competition. Its twist in the tale ending is a classic touch that should appeal to all the other story writers here.

Here is wishing you all the best for your law school career.

Muhammad Abdaal Akhtar,
Class of 2013 – NALSAR University of Law.