Bose was honoured with the award for openly voicing against issues such as terrorism and his active involvement and support for various other social causes.
The entries for the various categories were shortlisted by a group of eminent jury members, including Kiran Bedi, Prasoon Joshi, Madhu Trehan, Arvind Kejriwal, Nandita Das, Neelam Krishnamoorthy and Rakeysh Mehra.
The nominees and their works were judged on five parameters: social impact of the story, outcome of the issue raised, efforts put in for the story, nature of work done by the individual prior to the channel stepping in, and last but not least, severity of the odds faced by the citizen journalist in completing the project.