Archana Shukla, assistant editor, Rural Affairs, CNBC-TV18 won the RedInk Award for the Best Business & Economy coverage for the television category at the Mumbai Press Club’s annual RedInk Awards on June 28, 2019.

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Shukla won the award for the show Budget Caravan where her on-ground investigation in the rural jobs scheme MNREGA in Bikaner showed massive irregularities.

She is one of the 32 winners from over 1,000 entries across 15 categories.

Budget Caravan assesses government’s schemes and reports on expectations of rural India from the Union Budget.

In Budget Caravan 2018, Shukla focused on rural and agriculture related schemes of crop insurance, irrigation, MSP, and MNREGA in the state of Rajasthan. A ground level investigation into the rural job guarantee scheme MGNREGA in Bikaner district showed that job cards were up for sale and material supplies were only on paper. In just two blocks of Panchu and Nokha this corruption was affecting cattle shed projects worth Rs 90 crore.

Just a day after CNBC-TV18 aired the investigative report, the Ministry of Rural Development initiated an inquiry into the irregularities.