The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) released a statement detailing its process for selecting the Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

This follows recent media reports claiming the AAAI lacks transparency and professional integrity while picking the award.

The statement from AAAI claimed that 'nothing can be further away from the truth'. 

The AAAI has also engaged a professional institution to audit the process on how the awardee has been determined. 

The AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award started in 1988 and was called the AAAI Premnarayan Award.  There was no call for nominations, and the recipient was determined by a small sub-committee of the executive committee.

In 2008, the award was renamed as the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award.  

At that time, AAAI introduced a proper nomination form that sought several details like:

• Over 25 years as an advertising practitioner and must have been or currently be in a top management position
• Has been or continues to be an active participant in industry bodies and/or has made significant contributions in shaping industry priorities which enabled the advertising industry to grow, prosper and become more professionalised
• Should individually be known for her/ his integrity, ethical practice and leadership qualities
• Has contributed to her/his company/companies growth by innovative thinking and taking them in newer directions
• Has been involved in projects of social consequence which will be seen as a role model for the industry at large
• Seen as an industry veteran.
• In exceptional cases where an individual has made a significant contribution to the industry or its ecosystem, adherence to one or more of the above criteria may be relaxed.

The statement went on to reveal how a nomination form is sent to all members of AAAI seeking nomination after providing for a few weeks’ time to nominate.  All the nominations received are reviewed by the president and the secretariat review all received nominations, presenting the nominees in a tabular format that lists several aspects of each for comparison.  

As in the past, this year too, the board of directors approved the nomination form for sending to the members. This request was sent on 2 June 2026 seeking worthy nominations on or before 30 June 2026.  The industry body received five nominations:CVL Srinivas, Sandeep Goyal, Anupriya Acharya, Prasanth Kumar and Santosh Desai.  From the past nominations, the erstwhile jury had suggested that the AAAI should consider five names in the following year (which is the current year): MG Parameswaran, Nakul Chopra, Ashish Bhasin, Tapas Gupta and LV Krishnan.  

Among the 10 names, Kumar and Acharya did not want to be considered for the award and therefore their nominations were not considered. In effect, this meant AAAI had eight active nominees to choose from.

The AAAI claimed that ever since the nomination form was issued there was a serious attempt at lobbying by Tanya Goyal to give this award to her spouse Sandeep Goyal.  

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."

The note further stated that all the jury members, except Kumar, met on 28 July to select the 2026 awardee and the winner will be revealed shortly.

The statement concluded by stating that media articles had 'certain industry spokespersons talk against the process'. 

It added that the AAAI would welcome an opportunity to meet such people in person to review all documents involved in determining the eventual winner. 

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."