1st NATIONAL VIRTUAL MOOT COURT COMPETITION

NARSEE MONJEE INSTITUTE OF

MOOT PROPOSITION

“Union of Inida” (hereinafter referred to as Inida) is a constitutionally democratic country in South Asia with
135.26 crore population and Relhi as its capital city. Inida has a quasi-federal system and the Constitution and all
laws of the Union of Inida are in pari Materia to the laws of India. In 2020, a virus outbreak resulted in the death
of over 4 lakh people around the world and the same, which was identified as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Coronavirus-2 (hereinafter 'virus') affected more than 2.5 lakh people in Inida and was responsible for the death
of more than 8000 people. The disease caused by the virus, identified as COVID-19 a.k.a. Corona Virus Disease
(hereinafter 'disease'), was declared as a global pandemic by the WHO and is still spreading across the world at a
shocking rate.

To control the spread of the virus, the Inida government declared a nationwide lockdown that lasted for 2 months.
Partial lifting of lockdown started in the latter half of the second month and the Inida government had allowed
inter-district and inter-state travel by road, rail and air modes subject to travellers following the government's
institutional and home quarantine instructions.

PLOT 1

The Inida government with a view to safeguard people from contracting the virus and to curb massive spread of
virus mandated the installation and use of a mobile application named “Health link”1 (hereinafter 'application')
especially for travel by air and rail. According to the Inida government, the application is intended to enable
contact tracing as a means to control the spread of the virus. The government has mandated that the application

1
For all purposes, 'Health Bridge' shall be construed as India's 'Aarogya Setu' app.
should be mandatorily used by all private and government employees and it has been implemented as part of the
country's health surveillance due to drastic increase in the number of positive cases and deaths due to the virus.
The government has also promised delivery of smart phones at concessional prices to those who are unable to use
the application due to non-availability of smart phones. The application that uses both 'bluetooth' and 'location
access' relies on voluntary data collected to discover clusters and take sufficient safety measures to curb spread
of virus. Hence the users must regularly update their health status so that community spread can be controlled.

Though the Inida government repeatedly stated that the mobile application “Health link” is in tune with mobile
applications launched in other countries for tracing persons who test positive for the disease, an Inida cyber
security analyst named Ryan, residing in the capital city of Relhi, made several Facebook audio posts alleging
that the mobile application “Health link” which uses both 'bluetooth' and 'location access' cannot be said to be
similar to those applications developed by other countries as the applications of other countries do not access
user's location and only uses 'bluetooth' for identifying positive cases. The audio posts also alleged that “Health
link”, on account of its access to user's location, is a threat to privacy and hence cannot be made mandatory under
the guise of health surveillance. The audio posts also stated that the excessive data collected with the help of
access to user's location is a severe violation of fundamental rights.

Ryan files a petition before the Honourable Supreme Court of Inida challenging the directions of the Inida
government making installation and use of “Health link” mandatory on account of violation of right to privacy.
He specifically mentions in his petition that the compulsory instructions to use the application go against the ratio
propounded in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) and Anr. v. Union of India.

PLOT 2

The Relhi state police arrested Ryan on account of the Facebook audio posts made by him against the directions
of the Inida government making installation and use of “Health link” mandatory and charged him under section
153A of the Indian Penal Code for the offence of causing disharmony and feeling of hatred which disturb public
tranquility. During the trial, the trial court directed the investigating agency to test voice samples of the accused
with the help of technical experts. Ryan approached the Relhi High Court by way of a writ petition challenging
the direction of the trial court to test the voice samples but the Relhi High Court dismissed the writ petition on
account of the precedent set by the Honourable Supreme Court of Inida in the matter of Ritesh Sinha v. State of
UP (2019).

Aggrieved by this, Ryan approaches the Honourable Supreme Court of Inida by way of an appeal and contends
that the decision laid down in Ritesh Sinha v. State of UP (2019) needs a recheck as the Honourable Supreme
Court of Inida cannot invoke Article 142 of the Constitution of Inida to confer power on the trial court to order to
test voice samples which is equivalent to invoking Article 142 of the Constitution of Inida to infringe fundamental
rights, especially, right to privacy.

PLOT 3

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prime Minister's Office of Inida (PMOI) received several requests from
members of the public to set up an emergency fund that could be used for combating COVID-19 pandemic and
other similar situations in the future. Accordingly, the PMOI created the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and
Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of
emergency or distress situation, like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected.

After a month from establishing the PM CARES Fund, PMOI in response to an application filed under the Right
to Information Act, 2005 informed the applicant that the PM CARES Fund is not a public authority under the RTI
Act.

Immediately after this response to the RTI application, a PIL was filed in the Relhi High Court seeking
transparency in PM CARES Fund and a direction to display information in the concerned website regarding
details of money received and spent under the Right Information (RTI) Act, 2005.

The PIL was filed by a Relhi based lawyer Dino and though the petitioner contended that the public and especially
the COVID-19 victims have a “right to know” about the fund collected, the Relhi High Court dismissed the PIL
and affirmed that the PM CARES Fund is not a public authority within the meaning of Right to Information Act,
2005. Aggrieved by this, Advocate Dino has approached the Honourable Supreme Court of Inida by way of an
appeal.
 PLOT 4

The government of Inida, as part of partial lifting of lockdown, also allowed reopening of places of worship in
addition to allowing all industrial units and places of employment to function with 100% staff.

Though the Inida government had issued Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)2, a section of atheists of Inida
who are part of a voluntary organization named “Ethics Without Religion” filed a petition before the Honourable
Supreme Court of Inida challenging the decision of the Government of Inida to allow reopening of places of
worship during the time of an emergency situation posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the petitioners, the freedom of religion under Part III of the Constitution of Inida is subject to "health"
and it is not the right time to reopening places of worship. All the above petitions and appeals have come before
the Supreme Court of Inida in the same period and considering the fact that all the petitions and appeals involve
issues related to constitutional validity, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Inida decided to hear all these
matters jointly before a five judges bench through its virtual platform. All the petitions and appeals are fixed for
hearing before the Supreme Court of Inida on 13th September 2020. The parties are
free to identify all possible issues and frame contentions accordingly, but not frame issues and contentions on
maintainability and admissibility as they can consider all petitions and appeals admitted by the Supreme Court of
Inida.

This Moot Proposition is purely a work of fiction and resemblance to any such incidence shall be purely co-
incidental. The above set of facts is only for the purpose of conducting moot court competition and educational
purpose amongst law students. Any representations of the Governments and other institutions or persons are work
of fiction only employed for academic purposes. The details on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 available on the
WHO website shall be applicable in this case.

(PARTICIPANTS NEED TO FRAME THEIR OWN ISSUES DEPENDING UPON 4 PLOTS. MAXIMUM
OF FOUR ISSUES ARE ALLOWED)

Credits to
Dr. Sandeep Menon Nandakumar.
BALLB Hons. (NUALS), LLM (CUSAT), LLM (University of Exeter, UK), PhD (NUALS).

Thank you, sir, for helping us with this, if any participants found contacting him in any manner shall be disqualified.

2
Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to mean the same Standard Operating Procedure issued by the Union Ministry of Health and
Family Welfare ahead of opening up of places of worship for the public from June 8, 2020 under Unlock 1.