Published on: July 30, 2026
The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) has issued a detailed statement outlining the selection process for its Lifetime Achievement Award following recent media reports that questioned the transparency and integrity of the award.
Responding to the allegations, the industry body stated that the claims were unfounded and reaffirmed its commitment to a fair and transparent evaluation process. To further reinforce confidence in the award, AAAI said it has engaged a professional institution to independently audit the process used to determine this year’s recipient.
The association noted that the award was introduced in 1988 as the AAAI Premnarayan Award, with winners initially selected by a small sub-committee of the executive committee without a formal nomination process. In 2008, the honour was renamed the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award, and a structured nomination framework was introduced.
According to AAAI, the eligibility criteria require nominees to have over 25 years of experience in advertising, hold or have held senior leadership positions, contribute actively to industry bodies, demonstrate integrity and ethical leadership, support organisational growth through innovation, participate in socially impactful initiatives, and be recognised as industry veterans. The association also stated that exceptional contributions to the advertising ecosystem may warrant relaxation of one or more eligibility criteria.
The statement explained that nomination forms are circulated to all AAAI members, after which the President and Secretariat review the submissions and prepare a comparative summary for evaluation.
For the 2026 edition, the Board approved the nomination process and invited entries on 2 June 2026, with submissions closing on 30 June. The association received nominations for CVL Srinivas, Sandeep Goyal, Anupriya Acharya, Prasanth Kumar and Santosh Desai. Additionally, based on recommendations from the previous year’s jury, MG Parameswaran, Nakul Chopra, Ashish Bhasin, Tapas Gupta and LV Krishnan were also considered.
AAAI stated that Anupriya Acharya and Prasanth Kumar opted not to be considered, leaving eight active nominees for the jury’s evaluation.
The association further alleged that following the announcement of nominations, Tanya Goyal made repeated efforts to lobby in support of Sandeep Goyal’s candidature.
According to the note shared by AAAI, Tanya Goyal spoke with the president of AAAI on a few occasions insisting that Sandeep Goyal should be the worthy recipient of this award.
The note revealed, “When he told her that the jury would decide, she somehow decided that he was against Mr Goyal’s nomination and said that there is no transparency in the selection process. At her request and to allay Ms. Goyal’s doubt, the president invited her on 30 June 2026 to be part of the jury. In addition to the earlier appointed jury she also was taken as an additional jury member and all mails sent to jury members obviously were also sent to her.”
It added, “AAAI had always been very transparent in its dealings. The initial names of jury members have been on the website immediately after they have been announced on the first meeting of the new board in September 2025. To say that the jury names have been shrouded in mystery is far from true. The process followed is also very transparent. At the jury meeting, every jury member was asked to pick two names from the nominated names based on their study of their contribution to the industry and their own companies. The top three names based on such voting got discussed threadbare and a decision was arrived at collectively. The jury believes that when it comes to qualitative assessment of a nominee, it is best that a healthy discussion helps them arrive at a right decision. No two nominations are like to like for assigning marks or points for each criterion and therefore the jury members always preferred a qualitative assessment than a quantitative one. This is the normal process that is followed by many established awards across the world including our own prestigious ones.”
AAAI also confirmed that all jury members, except Prasanth Kumar, met on 28 July to finalise the 2026 recipient, with the winner set to be announced shortly.
Concluding its statement, the association addressed recent criticism published in the media, stating that it remains open to meeting individuals who have questioned the process and reviewing the relevant documents with them.
It concluded by saying, “We know in election politics, the losers always complain about the electronic voting machines (EVM) saying it is rigged. The same machines are perfect if their candidate has won. Similarly on SIR, when ineligible voters were removed from the voters list – if that led to winning of their party members, SIR served its purpose and if the party members lost, the complaint would be that the true voters were removed from the voters list. Unfortunately, Ms Goyal is in that situation and is calling out non-existent issues in determining the winner of this year’s AAAI Lifetime Achievement Awardee.”
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