%2Fgreater-kashmir%2Fmedia%2Fmedia_files%2F2026%2F09%2F22%2Fpcj-announces-7th-ashok-sodhi-memorial-awards-2026-09-22-07-07-44.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
Earlier this month we flagged that the Press Club of Jammu's open call for the 7th Ashok Sodhi Memorial Award closed on 14 September. The results are now in.
Announced at the Press Club on Monday, 22 September:
- First — Gurprabh Singh
- Second — Ankush Sharma
- Third — Gourav Rawat
- Plus 10 consolation prizes
The jury was Raju Kerni, Afzal Shah, Shishupal, Mukesh Gupta and Amit Sharma. Participation, the Club said, rose sharply on previous editions.
The award is named for Ashok Sodhi, the Jammu photojournalist killed while on assignment, and the Club has run it annually in his memory. Naming a working photographer's prize after a photographer who died doing the work is a particular kind of memorial — it says the craft is the thing being honoured, not the byline.
What makes it worth more than a results paragraph is the eligibility line, which the Club restates every year: the contest is open to "all people, including students, freelancers, citizen journalists and professional photojournalists."
That is unusual, and it is deliberate. Most photography prizes in India that carry any weight sit behind an accreditation, a press card, or a membership you cannot get without already having the work. This one does not. If you are nineteen, shooting on a phone, with no publication behind you and no obvious way of getting one, you can enter — and going by this year's entry numbers, more people have worked that out.
That matters more in Jammu than it would in a bigger city. There is no photography school here. There are very few galleries, no regular exhibition circuit for new work, and almost no structured way for someone starting out to have their pictures looked at seriously by people who shoot for a living. An annual open competition judged by five working photographers is, for a lot of young people in this city, close to the only real feedback loop available. A placing in it is a line on a portfolio that local editors actually recognise.
Three things the Club has not published, and which are worth asking about directly rather than assuming: the prize money, the detailed entry criteria, and next year's deadline. The 2026 window closed on 14 September, which would put the eighth edition's call somewhere around late August 2027 if the pattern holds — but that is an inference from the calendar, not an announcement. If you want to enter, the Press Club of Jammu is the place to ask, and it is worth asking early enough to shoot for it rather than submitting whatever is already on the card.
