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

Dilip Joshi’s Jethalal Won Most Popular TV Comic Role With 57.8%

By Karan Dutta

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:24 am

He took 3,812 of 6,596 verified votes and led every age group, with women and with men.

One show, five nominees

Fifteen nominees were on the ballot for Most Popular Performance in a Comic Role (Television) at IFTA 2026. One of them took more votes than all the others combined.

Dilip Joshi (Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah) won with 3,812 of 6,596 verified votes, 57.8%. The runner-up, Krishna Bharadwaj (Tenali Rama), got 11.9%. The winner’s share was 4.8 times the runner-up’s.

Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah had five nominees here, who together took 65.0% of the vote. Bhabiji Ghar Par Hain also had five, but they shared just 11.2%.

Dilip Joshi, winner of Most Popular Performance in a Comic Role (Television) 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 5,442 of the 6,596 votes (82%). Dilip Joshi won 59.7% of women’s votes and 47.9% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 78% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (3,539 votes).
Women aged 12–17 were Dilip Joshi’s strongest group: 64.8% of their 1,450 votes went to Dilip Joshi.
72% of Dilip Joshi’s votes came from women under 25 (2,731 of 3,812).

Dilip Joshi led in every age group with at least 30 voters.

Same winner, different second choices

Men’s second choice was Krishna Bharadwaj (Tenali Rama) with 26.6%, three times his share among women (8.9%).

Sumeet Raghavan: 5.7% of women’s votes, 2.6% of men’s, 2.2 times as popular with women.

Across IFTA 2026

This was one of three Television categories not won by Rimjhim – Choti Umar Bada Safar. The other two went to Kanika Mann (Naagin 7) and Laughter Chefs S3.

In the voters’ own words

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

“Best show and best comic of dilip ji”
“He definitely deserves recognition”
“The funniest”

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 Performance in a Comic Role (Television) result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Performance in a Comic Role (Television) results on PolBol (6,596 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.