The 2024 Ashish Yechury Memorial Award for Photojournalism was awarded to Palanikumar M. for his photo essay “There is no such thing as professional grief”, published in People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).    
The three-member awards jury was chaired by veteran journalist Kalpana Sharma, independent journalist and writer Priya M. Menon, and documentary photographer and visual artist Harikrishna Katragadda.    
The winner of the Ashish Yechury Memorial Award for Photojournalism received a trophy, citation and INR one lakh (1,00,000) in prize money.    
Citation    
Palanikumar M.’s deeply empathetic photography documents sanitation workers' families who are illegally forced into manual scavenging. He highlights how these preventable tragedies leave behind a trail of inconsolable grief and broken families. Palani’s work takes us back to the basics of why most of us have entered journalism – to question, comprehend, sensitise, and perhaps, to find solutions.    
Special Mentions    
Sriram Vittalamurthy for photo essay on “The crumbling fish markets of Mumbai” published in The Wire.    
Sudip Maiti’s “Odisha’s ghost villages” on the impact of sea erosion in Ganjam district published in the VillageSquare.    
Arun Sreedhar’s “Break the rod, spoil the strike” for his image of a broken lathi when the police tried break up a protest in Alappuzha, Kerala published in the Malayala Manorama.