Terms & Conditions of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms & Binding Agreement

By accessing, browsing, registering an account, forming teams, or submitting problem statements on the SIH & Campus Hackathon Management Portal ("the Platform"), you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to be legally bound by these Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy, and any college-specific competition bylaws established by your academic institution.

If you do not agree to these terms in their entirety, you must refrain from creating an account or participating in team activities on this Platform.

2. Participant Eligibility & Identity Verification

• Bona Fide Student Status: Only actively enrolled students pursuing recognized undergraduate, postgraduate, or diploma programs in verified academic institutions are eligible to participate.
• Accurate Registration: Students must provide their true legal name, verified institutional or personal email, valid telephone number, and official university roll number.
• Pre-Approved Clearance: Where an academic institution has uploaded an authenticated student roster, registrations matching pre-approved roll numbers are verified automatically. All other registrations require institutional SPOC or administrator approval.
• Single Account Rule: Each participant may maintain only one active platform account. Creation of duplicate, surrogate, or fictitious profiles is strictly prohibited and subject to immediate blacklisting.

3. Hackathon Team Formation Bylaws & SIH Compliance

To maintain statutory compliance with national hackathon mandates (including Smart India Hackathon directives):

4. Intellectual Property, Originality & AI-Assisted Code

We champion innovation while upholding the highest standards of academic and technological integrity:

• Ownership: Participants retain 100% intellectual property ownership of code, algorithms, hardware designs, and pitch materials produced during the hackathon.
• Warranty of Originality: Submissions must be the original creation of the team members. Plagiarism, copyright infringement, or presentation of pre-existing commercial solutions will result in disqualification.
• AI-Assisted Tools: Use of modern software engineering tools (e.g. LLMs, copilot agents, open-source libraries) is permitted provided all open-source licenses (MIT, Apache, BSD) are honored and the architectural solution is engineered by the team.
• Evaluation License: Teams grant their faculty SPOCs, appointed judges, and evaluating committees a limited, non-exclusive license to inspect source code and design documentation solely for evaluation and scoring purposes.

5. Faculty SPOC & Institutional Governance Authority

Designated Faculty Single Points of Contact (SPOCs) and College Administrators exercise definitive institutional authority:

• Review, endorse, or request amendments to team rosters, problem statement selections, and idea abstracts.
• Authorize the official export of institutional nomination sheets formatted for direct submission to the SIH central coordination committee.
• Resolve internal team disputes, member substitution requests, and disciplinary matters.

6. Code of Conduct & Prohibited Activities

Users agree not to engage in any activity that compromises platform integrity, including but not limited to:

• Attempting unauthorized access to other institutions' data or exploiting API endpoints.
• Submitting fraudulent identity documents or manipulating roll number records.
• Deploying automated scrapers, bots, or malicious scripts against portal infrastructure.
• Engaging in harassment, discrimination, or abusive conduct toward teammates, faculty, or administrators.

7. Disclaimers, Limitation of Liability & Jurisdiction

The Platform is provided "AS-IS" and "AS-AVAILABLE". While reasonable efforts are maintained to ensure high uptime and data integrity, the platform architects and affiliated academic institutions shall not be liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from technical interruptions or missed competition deadlines.

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the substantive laws of the Republic of India. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these terms shall fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent civil courts in Lucknow / Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.