Nitin Sethi bags ACJ investigative Journalism award

Nitin Sethi of The Huffington Post India and Shiv Sahay Singh of The Hindu on Saturday bagged the prestigious Asian College of Journalism’s Award for Investigative Journalism and the K. P. Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for Social Impact Journalism, respectively.

While Sethi won the award for his six-part series titled ‘Paisa Politics’ on electoral bonds, Singh’s story titled ‘Death by digital exclusion: On faculty, public distribution system in Jharkhand’ earned him the inaugural version of the social impact journalism award.

The awards were presented at a ceremony conducted online due to the ongoing Covid19 pandemic. The final jury comprising Senthil Changalvarayan, Vidya Subrahmaniam and Jose Martin Tharakan chose the winners from ten shortlisted entries in each category.

“Both awards comprise trophies and citations, while the Investigative Journalism Award winner receives INR 200,000/- in prize money and the Social Impact Award winner receives INR 100,000/-. The awards were presented to the winners by the Chief Guest Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist of the World Health Organisation, at the Inauguration of the Class of 2021,” ACJ said in a statement.

Efforts of two other journalists -- Jeff Joseph Paul Kadicheeni’s work ‘Kerala’s Contentious Quarries’ published in The Lede and Rohini Mohan’s work ‘Worse than a death sentence: Inside Assam’s sham trials that could strip millions of citizenship’ that was published in Scroll.in -- have been awarded special mentions by the jury.