The Students’ forum of the BCAS has been actively working towards pursuing the vision of providing students a platform conducive for growth and pursuit of knowledge. A step in that direction has been the organising of the fourth students’ annual meet, henceforth to be called as the Jal Dastur Students’ Annual Day. The event was a mix of learning, guidance, inspiration, healthy competition, fun and loads of prizes to be won. The workshop enjoyed the enrolment of over 200 students with active participation in all the contests organised. The meet was organised on Saturday, 6th August 2011 at Directiplex, Andheri 3.00 p.m. Like the first students’ annual meet, this year too we invited Padma Shri CA T. N. Manoharan, a very dear friend of the Society. Mr. Manoharan addressed the students on the topic ‘Design to Win’. The key-note was a blend of theory and case studies in real life. Mr. Manoharan shared with the students his experiences in personal and professional life which in his opinion has played an instrumental role in his successes. Mr. Manoharan chose to draw inferences from his tryst with Satyam Computer Services revival wherein qualities like persistence, discipline, hard work, empathy, positive attitude, in-depth understanding of the ground realities and most importantly the will to succeed were amongst the fundamental reasons for the turnaround of the failed organisation. Mr. Manoharan was successful in striking a cord with the students and driving home the point that challenges may vary but the approach to tackle them can be standardised. With the right approach Mr. Manoharan emphasised, success can be delayed but not denied. The audience redeemed their faith in the learned speaker’s address by giving a worthy applause filled with gratitude and appreciation. The Forum expresses its sincere appreciation to Padma Shri T. N. Manoharan to have spared his valuable time for the common interest of the students’ fraternity. Elocution competition: BCAS had organised an Elocution competition for CA students under the auspices of Smt. Chandanben Maganlal Bhatt Elocution Fund. The competition enjoyed the participation of 33 students conducted at the Conference room of BCAS, Mumbai on Saturday 28th May 2011.
All the participants were given three minutes each to present their views on respective topics. Participants were judged by three very dear friends of the BCA Society; Sonalee Godbole, Mihir Sheth and Nitin Shingala. Each participant competed for 100 marks broken up into the undermentioned criteria: Personal Appearance, Speech Opening, Eye Contact, Voice Modulation, Gestures, Contents, Speech Conclusion, Time Management & Overall Impact. Finally the judges unanimously shortlisted eight participants to compete for the coveted Elocution Prize trophies.
All the finalists competed fiercely in front of a large audience to make a lasting impression on our judges for the finals; Aspi Doctor, Joe Rodrigues and Shyam Lata. The audience was treated to some of the finest speeches encompassing information, humor, satire, thought provocation, inspiration, vision and last but not the least, lots of passion. But like all competitions, only some win while some lose.
This competition was no different, five participants perished and the top three winners emerged to claim the gleaming crystal trophies.
The winners
The winners of the elocution competition were as follows:
Quiz Contest
‘Quiz 20-Twenty’ the quiz contest is organised by BCAS only for CA students. The quiz was designed to test the participants’ knowledge about current affairs and general knowledge; it also had a dash of academics to rake up that grey matter. All in all, infotainment formed the core of this event.
It was an inter-firm competition with all the firms invited to send their best teams to fight for the coveted prizes. The participants in the quiz contest had to appear for a standard set of questions. They were screened on the basis of the marks they scored in this questionnaire. The top scorers were short-listed but announced only on the day of the final quiz on 6th August 2011. The eliminations of the quiz took place along with elocution competition at the conference room of the BCAS Office, Churchgate, Mumbai on Saturday, 28th May 2011. Total number of students participating in the eliminations was over 60 students.
The shortlisted teams to compete in the final round of the quiz were as follows:
The competition had its share of ups and down. All the teams gambled for their fortunes, some got rewarded while some paid dearly. The audiences were treated with a mix of knowledge, fun and most importantly, healthy competition. The winners of the quiz contest were as follows:
The winner of this year’s rotating firm trophy is M/s. B. K. Oza & Associates. Awakening the writer within The writing competition was initiated last year and now this year onwards it is named in the memory of Jal Dastur. The competitive strives to harness talent in literary skills. The initiative also enjoyed the strong backing of the BCAS Foundation. Write-ups not exceeding 1000 words were invited from all the participants and the responsibility of assessment was entrusted to the Society’s very dear friends K. C. Narang, Pradip Kapasi, Gautam Nayak and Pradeep Shah. All the judges need no introduction and anybody regularly following the BCA Journal, must be aware of the immense contribution done by these learned people to the journal over a long period of time.
The winners of the article writing contest were as follows:
The task of the judges was more demanding in this case unlike other competitions because unlike other cases this competition performance cannot be taken of face value. A lot of reading between the lines is necessary by the contestants who don the cap of an evaluator of such contest. But our judges did not let us down and gave us our three winners for this year, the ones who toiled and gave their 100% to the competition, and hence rightly deserved to win. The winner of this year is yet to join a chartered accountant firm for articleship, hence this year the rotating trophy for the firm has not been presented. The evening ended with a show of appreciation for all the persons responsible for organising this wonderful evening full of guidance, entertainment and fun. The students were treated with a sumptuous meal after a hard day’s work with renewed promises to organise and participate in many such programmes to follow in future.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the undermentioned persons without whose support this event would not have scaled the heights it did.
- Padma Shri T. N. Manoharan
- Shri Sohrab E. Dastur
- Shri Mukesh Bhatt
- Shri Mahendra Turakhia
- BCAS Foundation
- All the Judges for the various Competitions
- Mr. Ashish Fafadia
- The Admin Team at Directi Iplex
- President & Vice-President, BCAS
- Office Bearers of the Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society
- Core Group Members of BCAS.
- The Admin Team at B
