Participants attend Pratijja, KIIT’s annual oratory competition in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, April 11: The sixth edition of Pratijja, the annual open oratory competition of KIIT University, was held on its campus on Sunday.

Organised by Kroncile, the literary society of the university, Pratijja or “war of words” saw participation of more than 100 youngsters.

Apart from school and college students, many working youngsters had also taken part in the competition. In the first round titled Minute Expressions, the participants had to pick a chit with a topic written on it.

They were allowed one minute each to put forth their views using any flavour such as, inspirational, informative, satirical, humourous, fiction and fact.

Only 40 participants could make it to the second round, which was titled Jugalbandi. Here the contestants were paired up on a random basis and had to speak for three minutes on the same topic. In this round, one member of the team had to speak in favour of the topic.

His speech was followed by a counter argument by his partner who had to gradually move back to the “for” part without making any obvious contradiction to his or her original stand.

“This was our first experience at public speaking. The exposure is good with so many contestants from various colleges participating. The transition from the “pros” to “cons” argument within a limited time period was the most challenging part. A lot of students fell into that trap and contradicted their own point of view,” said participants Tanmay Dayal and Anuradha Dasgupta, first-year students of the host university.

The third and last round was held in the evening with 10 contestants expressing their ideas on the issue of “anti-corruption” in the country. Titled “India can Never Get Itself Free from Corruption”, the topic had been announced 90 minutes before the grand finale began.

The contestants were divided into two groups — either to speak for or against the given theme. The jury and audience asked the participants various questions at the end of their speech.

The results were declared late last evening. Dushyant Panda of KIIT University emerged as the champion and bagged a cash award of Rs 10,000.

The second (Challenger) and third (Outstanding Speaker) positions went to Arindam Nayak of Loyola School and Saurav Pathak of KIIT, who received a cash prize of Rs 8,000 and Rs 5,000, respectively.