Indian Express’ Dipankar Ghose, website PARI chosen for 2020 Prem Bhatia journalism awards

New Delhi, Jul 31 (PTI) The Prem Bhatia awards for outstanding journalism for this year have gone to Dipankar Ghose of the Indian Express and non-profit journalism website People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) for their coverage of COVID-19 and its impact across the country.

New Delhi, Jul 31 (PTI) The Prem Bhatia awards for outstanding journalism for this year have gone to Dipankar Ghose of the Indian Express and non-profit journalism website People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) for their coverage of COVID-19 and its impact across the country.  Ghose and PARI, who were chosen for the awards by an independent jury, will be awarded cash prizes of Rs 2 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh, respectively. “The Prem Bhatia Awards for outstanding journalism have for this year gone to Dipankar Ghose of the Indian Express for his coverage of the migrant labour crisis and other Covid-19 related issues, and to the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a non-profit journalism website dedicated to reporting on rural India, for its extensive field reports, including climate change effects and the impact of the pandemic on rural India,” the Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust said in a statement on Friday.

The awards were instituted in 1995 in the memory of eminent journalist Prem Bhatia (1911–1995). The main objective of the Trust, the statement added, is to propagate the values that he stood for -- objective reporting, fearless pursuit of the truth and a commitment to improving the standards of journalism in India.

Bhatia, who had an illustrious career spanning over six decades, wrote on both political and social events in a range of newspapers, including The Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore), The Statesman (Calcutta and Delhi), The Guardian (London), The Times of India (Delhi), The Indian Express (Delhi) and The Tribune (Chandigarh). Earlier recipients of the Prem Bhatia award include Raj Chengappa, Neerja Chowdhury, Suhasini Haider, Praveen Swamy, Rajdeep Sardesai and P Sainath.