SCHOOL OF LAW

presents
BENNETT NATIONAL MOOT COURT COMPETITION 2019

March 29th to 31st, 2019

Venue: School of Law, Bennett University, Greater Noida

MOOT PROPOSITION

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 Andronix Corporation v. The Union of India

with

Citizens for Digital Privacy v. The Union of India & The State of Uttar
Pradesh

FACTS

1. Andronix Corporation is a private limited company incorporated in Cayman Islands

with its majority shareholders (60%) as Chinese venture funds and the remaining 40%
with two United States promoters (20% each). Andronix is reputed world-wide for its
end-to-end drone/ unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) solutions, which integrates state-of-
the-art drone body design with miniaturised electronics, robust and indigenously
developed operating system and supporting software that can operate the drone as well
as undertake massive data analytics in respect of the gathered data, and advanced
sensors, cameras and detect-and-avoid systems.

2. The data gathered by Andronix drones are sent back to servers located in China, where
they are analyzed in extremely granular ways. Pursuant to the data analytics, Andronix
would send detailed reports containing their analysis to respective clients. Clients could
then act upon these reports as they deem fit.

3. The State of Uttar Pradesh, seeing the sophisticated technology and the quality of output
offered by Andronix, and appreciating the immense potential offered by the application
of UAV technologies, executed a five-year contract with Andronix in 2016. This
contract was executed after following the usual governmental procedures for floating
tenders and awarding contracts. Under this contract, Andronix was to assist the State of
Uttar Pradesh by deploying its UAV technology and drones for various kinds of use
cases as may be specified from time to time. The contract listed natural disasters, law
enforcement, and inspection of repair and maintenance operations in government
properties as illustrative use cases but left it to the discretion of the State to prescribe
additional use cases as may be felt necessary from time to time. The recitals to the

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 contract mentioned that in a data-driven world, governance and public policy would
benefit from partnerships forged with private entities like Andronix.

4. Three months after this contract was executed, the Uttar Pradesh government
bureaucracy formulated a policy titled Advance Data-driven Response Policy (ADRP)
for cities like Lucknow, Varanasi and Allahabad. The stated objective of ADRP was to
integrate emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and deep learning solutions,
facial recognition solutions, internet-of-things and ubiquitous sensors, advanced data
analytics and any other sunrise technologies, into the government machinery to enable
better governance, enhance the informational pool for triggering/channelizing public
policy measures, law enforcement and more effective management of public order and
security. ADRP specifically spelt out the use of drones to track human movement in
these cities, capture facial images, and match it with databases of known offenders, to
operationalise the State’s belief in prevention being better than cure when it came to
law enforcement and public order concerns.

5. In furtherance of the 2016 contract, Andronix ran a drone surveillance pilot in certain
parts of Allahabad, reporting on near real-time basis the movement of suspicious
individuals and the occurrence of seemingly suspicious activities. This helped alert law
enforcement authorities to these happenings and take some pre-emptive steps such as
deploying more police personnel on the field and enhancing the database of suspected
persons and types of activities happening in an area. In one instance, when a stampede
occurred in Lucknow because of a bridge collapse, Andronix drones were immediately
flown in to help manage the scenario. Another pilot was undertaken in 2017 when
Andronix drones were used to help the traffic police identify choke points and thus
manage traffic better in Allahabad. A similar pilot was undertaken to help the police
with crowd management and even spotting of missing individuals particularly children
during an important religious festival in Varanasi in 2018.

6. But Andronix could not carry out many more activities under this contract because the
regulatory environment in India was not favourable to the technology. However, in
August 2018 things started looking up as the Union of India finalised the UAV
Regulations 1.0 and made it come into effect conditional upon a reg-tech solution,
“Digital Sky”, being put in place. In addition to these regulations, the Union of India

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 also amended the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and
Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 with effect from
December 30, 2018 mandating that locational and facial data would qualify as sensitive
personal data and that all sensitive personal data of Indian citizens must be stored in
servers located in India.

7. Andronix was not happy with these regulations and the amended IT Rules because they
would operate jointly and severally to hamper ease of doing business for foreign
corporations, as well as hinder next generation innovation in ways that Andronix
considered undesirable. Therefore, Andronix approached the Supreme Court of India
challenging the UAV Regulations as well as the amended IT Rules.

8. At the same time, a citizens’ action group, Citizens for Digital Privacy, validly
incorporated as a non-government organization, publicly called for a ban on UAV
technology in urban settings and densely populated regions claiming it is violative of
privacy, bodily, and property interests. They have now approached the Supreme Court
of India challenging the the amended IT Rules and UAV regulations (against the Union
of India) and the ADRP (against the State of U.P).

9. The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has decided to hear both writ petitions together
because of the connected nature of issues involved as outlined below: -
1) Whether the writ petition filed by Andronix Corporation is maintainable in law?
2) Whether the 2018 amendments to the IT Rules and the UAV Regulations 1.0
are ultra vires the Constitution of India?
3) Whether the ADRP is ultra vires the Constitution of India?

NOTE - Teams are expected to confine their arguments to these issues. The moot
proposition has been drafted by Mr. Ananth Padmanabhan, Fellow, Centre for Policy
Research. Any attempt to contact the said person for the purposes of the moot proposition
on or before the competition dates shall result in immediate disqualification from the
competition.