The Bhagwat Award was instituted out of an endowment received from Dr. A.G. Bhagwat in the memory of his father Dr. G.A. Bhagwat, for the paper presented at the annual conference of the society by a younger member. The paper must be presented by a member not over 35 years of age on 30th September of the year in which he is submitting his entry. If that conference is not held in that year, the date of reckoning the age shall remain the same.

None of the authors or co-authors will be over 35 years of age on the specified day mentioned above. The contestants must enclose with their papers, their certificates of age as recorded in the school leaving certificate or equivalent records.

For any paper to be considered for the award, it shall be necessary for the author to submit six copies of the full paper to the Chairperson, Awards sub-committee, by a date determined by the council of the IPS. For the sake of uniformity of style the paper shall be prepared in accordance with the “Instructions to contributors” published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry. Six copies of the abstract of the paper (not more than 200 words) in six separate sheets shall be enclosed with the paper.

To be eligible for the award, the paper must fulfill each of the following criteria.

(a) It must be a research paper based on work done in India. It must not have been published in a scientific journal nor have been awarded any award of the IPS.

(b) The principal author and at least 50% of all authors must be members of the IPS at the time of the submission of the paper.

A panel of judges shall rate the papers. Out of the full marks i.e. 100, 60% will be for preparation and compilation of the paper and 40% for its presentation at the conference. The paper securing highest total marks (out of 100) shall win the award subject to ratification by the awards committee and the executive council of the society. In case of a tie, the concerned papers will be declared joint winners. To win an award not less than 50% of the full marks must be obtained by a paper. To be eligible for presentation, the written version of the paper must secure at least 40% of the full marks allotted for the written version i.e. 24 out of 60.

All authors of the award wining paper shall be considered to have won the award and will be issued certificates and will be eligible for the award money. The money will be handed over to the principal author for distribution among the co-authors.

None of the judges appointed for this award, shall be contestants for this award. However, a judge is eligible to contest for any other award.