IFTA 2026, India’s only people’s choice film and television awards — voting open

She led with women, men and every age group under 45, with more than twice the votes of runner-up Ananya Panday.

A clear win

Thirteen actresses were on the ballot for Most Popular Actress in a Supporting Role (Bollywood) at IFTA 2026.

Sara Arjun (Dhurandhar: The Revenge) won with 1,251 of 2,832 verified votes, 44.2%. The runner-up, Ananya Panday (Kesari Chapter 2), got 19.0%. The winner’s share was 2.3 times the runner-up’s.

Border 2’s Sonam Bajwa was third with 16.5%. No one else passed 6%.

Sara Arjun, winner of Most Popular Actress in a Supporting Role (Bollywood) at IFTA 2026

Who decided it

Every IFTA vote is OTP-verified, one per WhatsApp number per category, and every voter’s age and gender is recorded at sign-up. So this is not a survey sample. It is the full count of who voted.

Women cast 2,176 of the 2,832 votes (77%). Sara Arjun won 45.6% of women’s votes and 39.6% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 76% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (1,534 votes).
Women aged 35–44 were Sara Arjun’s strongest group: 50.9% of their 112 votes went to Sara Arjun.
64% of Sara Arjun’s votes came from women under 25 (794 of 1,251).

The only groups Sara Arjun did not win were the oldest. Ananya Panday (Kesari Chapter 2) led among voters aged 45–59 (40.2%) and 60-plus (63.6%), though these were small groups.

Same winner, different second choices

Sara Arjun won with women (45.6%) and with men (39.6%). Below the winner, women put Ananya Panday second (19.2%) and men put Sonam Bajwa second (19.8%).

Janki Bodiwala: 5.4% of women’s votes, 3.4% of men’s, 1.6 times as popular with women.
Sheeba Chaddha: 2.0% of women’s votes, 3.0% of men’s, 1.5 times as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

This was the only IFTA 2026 win for Dhurandhar: The Revenge, and the sixth for the Dhurandhar franchise. The first film won five Bollywood categories.

In the voters’ own words

Voters could add a reason with their vote. A few of them:

“My favourite because of her cuteness and unreal performance in dhurandhar franchise 😭😭”
“Her acting in this film 😭 just amazing 😍😍😍”
“She acted really good”

This is not a ratings chart or a critics’ list. It measures which audience turned up to vote, and how hard.

See the full results

IFTA 2026 voting has closed and the results are in. No jury, no award fixing: every winner was decided by India’s votes. See the full Most Popular Actress in a Supporting Role (Bollywood) result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Actress in a Supporting Role (Bollywood) results on PolBol (2,832 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.