The Gurupoornima celebrations for the year 1998 have come to end with the conclusion of the essay writing activity. We are happy to see entries in all the essay categories, especially the one for younger age groups. Our little effort to enhance the understanding of Sai teachings and philosophy through encouraging writings on Sadguru Sainath Maharaj of Shirdi would not be possible without the help of thousands of devotees who took time to read and vote on the entries. Our sincere thanks are also due to the global devotee panel that helped us in the process of evaluation. Finally, thanks are due to all the participants who contributed such beautiful essays on Sri Sainath.

"Our dear Sainath shined through all the participants. When every word is HIS, it is difficult to judge the essays as number one & number two and so forth. I prayed to Sri Sai to help me evaluate the essays." writes one of the judges.

"I went through all the entries for this essay writing activity and made an humble attempt to rank them. All the essays are well written, beautiful and contentful." writes another judge.

The final result was arrived at by a combination of the sum total votes received by each article from numerous readers and from a panel of independent judges from all over the world. The votes were decisive in every prize category except for the second prize in Category III, where it was a tie.

The final results are declared as follows: