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

Diljit Dosanjh Won IFTA 2026’s OTT Lead Actor Race by Just 13 Votes

By Rohan Jain

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:23 am

This was the closest result of IFTA 2026: 1,965 verified votes, five actors above 11%, and a different leader in almost every age group.

Thirteen votes in it

Fifteen actors were on the ballot for Most Popular Actor in a Lead Role (OTT) at IFTA 2026.

Diljit Dosanjh (Detective Sherdil) won with 288 of 1,965 verified votes, 14.7%. The runner-up, Pankaj Tripathi (Criminal Justice: A Family Matter), got 14.0%. The gap was just 13 votes.

No other IFTA 2026 category was this close. Five actors finished between 11.0% and 14.7%, so a swing of a few dozen votes could have changed the winner.

Diljit Dosanjh, winner of Most Popular Actor in a Lead Role (OTT) 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 1,520 of the 1,965 votes (77%). Diljit Dosanjh won 16.7% of women’s votes and 7.6% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 73% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (1,025 votes).
Women aged 12–17 were Diljit Dosanjh’s strongest group: 25.5% of their 376 votes went to Diljit Dosanjh.
74% of Diljit Dosanjh’s votes came from women under 25 (213 of 288).

Each age group had its own favourite. Teenagers backed Diljit Dosanjh strongly (23.7%). Voters aged 18–24 put Pankaj Tripathi first, and voters aged 25–44 put Emraan Hashmi first. Diljit won because the youngest voters were the most united.

With 1,965 votes, this is one of the smaller IFTA 2026 categories, so read the smaller groups (such as voters over 45) with care.

Women and men picked different winners

Men’s clear favourite was Emraan Hashmi, with 23.9% of their votes. But women cast 77% of all votes in this category, and Emraan got only 9.2% of theirs.

Karan Tacker: 13.5% of women’s votes, 5.0% of men’s, 2.7 times as popular with women.
Anil Kapoor: 8.0% of women’s votes, 3.7% of men’s, 2.2 times as popular with women.
Manoj Bajpayee: 3.9% of women’s votes, 7.1% of men’s, 1.8 times as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

Detective Sherdil was also third in Most Popular OTT Film, with 12.4% of the vote, behind Sarzameen and Accused.

In the voters’ own words

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

“Punjabi aw gye oye 🤗”
“I like his acting skills 😊”
“Because of his acting”

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 Actor in a Lead Role (OTT) result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Actor in a Lead Role (OTT) results on PolBol (1,965 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.