The winning entry for the ACJ Investigative Journalism Award belonged to The Reporters’ Collective for a 3-part series titled ‘Forests for Profits’ by Tapasya and Nitin Sethi.

The awards jury was chaired by editor and columnist Rahul Jacob, who was accompanied by independent journalist and author Ammu Joseph, and constitutional lawyer and author Gautam Bhatia.

The award, which comprises a trophy, a citation and INR 200,000/- in prize money, was presented to the winner by the Chair, Award Jury,  Rahul Jacob at the Convocation of the ACJ Class of 2024.

The jury’s citation read as follows:

Forests for Profit is a role model of investigative reportage. The three-part series meticulously shows how accessing documents from parliament and government ministerial communications can be the foundation for groundbreaking journalism. The articles provide evidence of the government backtracking from stated objectives, in this case to legislate a new forests act and then in 2019 and 2021 requesting a parliamentary committee to, in effect, overlook its earlier assurances to have a new act in place. The series goes further by documenting how the new laws exempted private corporations from existing conservation laws. This paved the way for real estate and plantation companies to operate more freely, overriding environmental concerns and tribal community rights. Forests for Profit is a close up of the government machinery in action when it wishes to dilute environmental standards. This is a live issue across the country that cuts across party lines and states: It is not a pretty sight.

This series also helps underline the validity of the parliamentary Committee on Government Assurances’ oversight powers. This is a much needed example of one pillar of democracy creating stronger scaffolding for another. The Reporters Collective accounted for four of the 12 shortlisted entries for this award, a remarkable achievement. The Reporters Collective team of Tapasya T and Nitin Sethi richly deserve The ACJ Investigative Journalism Award for this master class in holding the government to account.

The jury also conferred the following Special Mentions for this award:

1. Driving Muslims out of "Devbhoomi" by Tusha Mittal and Alishan Jafri published in The Caravan.

2. ‘Cough syrup killed scores of children. Why no one has been held to account’ by Krishna N Das and Jennifer Rigby published in Reuters.