Vidit Baya was among the 200 students pan India who bagged the Times Scholar 2019 award for his excellence in awareness of current affairs and being a voracious and zealous reader. The Times Scholar award 2019 was presented by the Honorable Vice President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu.

Vidit, who is also a recipient of various recognitions from publishers such as Time and The Guardian, has been a climate change activist over the last 2 years. He has passed out of school this year. The felicitation ceremony was conducted online and winners were given a Dell laptop. 

The Times Scholar 2019 program has been conducted through a tedious process that lasted for well over 6 months. With over 3 lakh participants going through the long journey within the realms of newspapers, they were subjected to rigourous readings, practice tests and presentations.  They then appeared for a tough test to test their mettle and only 632 of them made it to the interviews. 

The interview tested them beyond the realms of their academic sphere. 200 of the interview finalists were then selected as winners. This talks about the depth in the quality of the participants.

With the entire evaluation process being conducted online, the interview that was held online was the first time the participants came face to face with the jury. The interviewees went beyond reading the newspapers stories that made up their syllabus and delved into the realms of the domain. This helped them form their own perspectives and the they went on to read and study these topics in detail. Well read was indeed well prepared.

Winners were split in two categories - Classes X-XI and Class XII. Selected candidates of Class XII will also be offered a one year scholarship to the under graduate courses at Bennett University.