The Prem Bhatia Awards for outstanding journalism have for this year gone to the Dainik Bhaskar team of reporters for their coverage of the under reporting of Covid deaths in U.P, M.P, Rajasthan and Gujarat, and to Ms. Vaishnavi Rathore of The Bastion digital magazine for her wide-ranging coverage of environmental degradation issues and displacement of Adivasis.
The Prem Bhatia Awards were instituted in 1995 by the Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust, in the memory of Prem Bhatia (1911-1995), the eminent journalist. The main objective of the Trust is to propagate the values that Prem Bhatia stood for: objective reporting, fearless pursuit of the truth and a commitment to improving the standards of journalism in India.
There are two awards, one for reporting on political issues and the other for reporting on environmental and development issues. Awardees are selected by independent juries. The former award goes to the Dainik Bhaskar team collectively and the latter to Ms. Vaishnavi Rathore.
Past winners of the awards include prominent journalists like Raj Chengappa, Neerja Chowdhury, Suhasini Haider, Praveen Swamy, Rajdeep Sardesai and Dr. P Sainath among others.
