Overview
- The honors were presented during the inaugural session of the 14th Connections Meet, recognizing work across journalism, advertising, public relations and public service with cash prizes from ₹10,000 to ₹1.5 lakh plus trophies and certificates.
- Jury Awards included Laxmi Devi Aere as Agriculture Reporter of the Year, Safeena Wani as Reporter of the Year (Publishing), Medha Yadav as Reporter of the Year (Broadcast) and Mohammad Asad as Producer of the Year (Broadcast).
- In Indian-language and digital-video segments, Saurav Kumar Borah won Reporter of the Year (Publishing), Alpesh Arvind Karkare won in Broadcast and Tanzil Asif was named Independent Reporter of the Year (Digital-Video).
- Special Mentions went to Garima Singh for Broadcast Reporting, Nantha Kishore G K for Indian Language Reporting (Broadcast) and Gargy Satapathy for Indian Language Reporting (Publishing).
- Committee Awards named actor Chandan Roy and journalist Abhinav Pandey as Alumni of the Year, with Lifetime Achievement honors for Milan Vohra, Lipika Sud, Pradeep Kumar Mallik, Dr Sangita Thakur and Mitali Mohanty Ghosh.