Invitation:
A personal letter from the Founder and Chief, Deepak Thimaya is sent to heads of institution of more than Five Thousand schools. The letter describes the importance of the role played by Verbattle in making a difference to the life and the future of children and youth. However it is not imperative that only the schools that have received an invitation must participate.

Tele calling:
Tele callers who are part of the Verbattle team call the heads of schools who have already been sent a letter of invitation to obtain their response.

Delivery of Kits and visit by Verbattle Team Members:
A Verbattle Kit containing application forms and specific publicity material along with a copy of the film on Verbattle is delivered to the school office. A Verbattle representative meets the Principal or the concerned staff and gives a personal invitation. The representative clears any doubts by providing necessary information.

The school does its own selection process within the school in case of Verbattle Beginner and Junior and in case of Verbattle Senior college students team up with their friends and directly register. In schools the registration is a longer process starting with encouraging interested children to respond and then to select them through some ingenuous process and then make teams that are eligible to be registered.

Enquiry through Tele callers:
All interested schools select their teams, motivate the students and provide information to the mentor teacher. The tele callers help the schools in the registration process by assisting in the smooth completion of formalities.

Team visit with posters:
A team of Verbattle resource people visit interested schools to meet with the Mentor teacher. Interested students are briefed on the conduct of Verbattle, the winning secrets and also shown some instructional films along with the formal Power Point Presentation.

INTRA SCHOOL SELECTION:
Most schools conduct Intra-school competitions in debate and speech to select the best team. Intra school activities aimed at sending the best teams to Verbattle involve the participation of hundreds of students.
Schools that have previously participated take extra care to prepare their students after the selection.

Mentor Selection:
It becomes essential that the teams participating in Verbattle Beginner and Junior get the right mentor who is registered with them to see them through the competition as a friend, guide, manager and officiating as the Mentor and participating in levels from and above the Combat Stage. The Mentor cannot be changed during the event.

A school is allowed to send a maximum of Three teams per category. The teams are restricted to Three only to allow more schools to participate from all the zones.

The teams will have Two members each. An ideal team would consist of members who are capable of speaking on either side of the argument at the shortest notice.

Unlike the previous years, the Zonal Clamber will itself mark the beginning of the debate competition. Instead of one team speaking at a time, there will be actual debates between three teams.

Ten debate statements are announced two weeks before the commencement of the event. The registered teams for the Zonal Clamber prepare on all the Ten Zonal Clamber debate statements announced on the Website and should be ready with for and against arguments.

Two hours before each slot of debate, the debate statement & the side of argument is decided by lotto. The teams per debate are put together by randomly generated allocation. That means a debate can even have two teams from the same school or college.

Each debate group will have three rounds. The first and second round will be for thirty seconds each and the third round will be of one minute for each team. Judges may question the teams if they feel so.

The purpose is to select the top Eighty-one teams based on the right combination, based on the sense of the team members, their presentation skills, felicity with language, faculty, body language, knowledge, vocabulary, attitude, time management and engagement of the audience and other related elements collectively referred to as Verbattle essentials hereafter.

Since a large number of teams would be participating, and a total of eighty-one teams are to be selected from the three zones for the Skirmish, every debate may not throw up a team that will reach the next level.

Out of all the debates in the Zonal Clamber, the top teams scoring decisive marks which are ahead of the next best teams with a huge margin in the debate will be selected according to the proportional quota available per zone.

The quota per zone is:
Bangalore - 40, Hubli - 21, and Mangalore - 20

For example in call number 10 (the sequential number allocated for all debates) if the winner team B has won with a margin that in placement ranks 21st in Mangalore by way of descending order of marks, the team does not qualify and every other winning team of a debate in order of placement thereafter would not qualify.

Skirmish is the first state level stage of Verbattle Junior and Verbattle Senior.

The total number of teams selected from the Zonal Clamber for the Skirmish held in Bangalore is eighty-one.

Eighty-one teams are randomly allocated to twenty-seven debates as three teams per debate.

Statements for the debates are announced Thirty-six hours prior to the event. Selected debaters need to be completely aware of, well-informed and insightful about all the Twenty-seven debate statements announced in advance.

Twenty-four hours prior to the event, like three teams per debate, the teams randomly allocated per debate will be announced. Two hours before each slot of debate, the debate statement will be assigned to each debate group by lotto. The ‘for-against’ sides will also be decided by lotto.

The Jury, consisting of three members in consultation with the Chief Moderator of Verbattle, will deliberate and decide the winners per debate ensuring that the selected team qualifies based on not just a few but the average desirability in all the Verbattle Essentials.

At the end of Twenty-seven debates conducted with Eighty-one teams, in debate groups of three each, Twenty-seven best teams are selected to move on to the Combat Stage.

Nine debate statements are announced Twelve hours prior to the commencement of the competition. Two hours before the commencement of the competition, the Call Numbers of the debates are announced by randomly allocating teams to the nine debates in the Combat Round.

Three teams are allocated to each debate. Two hours before each slot of debate, the debating group gets its statement by lotto. The ‘for-against’ sides will also be decided by lotto.

In this stage the Mentors are allowed to sit next to their participating teams. A team can consult the Mentor. The Mentor may otherwise monitor the debate for his/her team, manage information and also in the end ask a detrimental question to an opposing team.

The question is asked to either of the opposing teams with the purpose of exposing the lack of preparation, lack of knowledge or weakness in arguments. This is one round where it could be testing the actual prospects of a team that may have otherwise performed well in the earlier rounds.

The selected nine teams will move ahead to Confrontation stage.

In the confrontation stage, three statements are announced two hours before the commencement of the competition. Concurrently before each slot of debate, the debate statement is assigned to each debate. Total three debates with three teams per debate are given the statements and the side of the argument by lotto.

The teams are, like in the earlier stage, assigned randomly to the debates on three teams per debate basis. In addition to the Mentor Round, the Audience Round is an additional Round in Confrontation. In the Audience Round a member of the audience can ask a question to a team and three different members among the audience can ask a question to a team.

Three teams out of the Nine will move to the Final stage of ‘FACE OFF’

In this round, Three subjects are listed. Two hours before the commencement of final competition, three debate subjects, for instance Education, Health, Democracy, are allocated to the teams. This means each Finalist Team gets one subject.

Each team prepares a debatable statement based on the subject it has got. Before the final round ten minutes before the first debate the first team announces its statement and invites the other two teams to choose to argue for or against.

The other two teams too do it likewise with their statements. All the three teams get set for the three debates; with their statements and also their sides for others’ statements.

In addition to the Mentor’s Round and the Audience Round, the members of the three to five member Jury may also ask questions pertaining to the argument.

The final is decided by the Jury after deliberations and majority vote.

The Winner for the year emerges.

The winner team walks away with a grand prize of Rs One Lakh in cash

Time waits for none… you may either choose to be a part of history

Or

Participate in Verbattle & be THE HISTORY