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Kanchan Dubey Won With 26%, Rimjhim’s Narrowest Win of IFTA 2026

By Neha Mittal

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:24 am

Rimjhim won six Television categories. This was the closest, with four actresses above 13%.

Rimjhim’s closest race

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

Kanchan Dubey (Rimjhim – Choti Umar Bada Safar) won with 3,162 of 12,088 verified votes, 26.2%. The runner-up, Arshiya Sharma (Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai), got 17.7%. The winning margin was 1,024 votes.

In its other five wins, Rimjhim – Choti Umar Bada Safar took between 54.6% and 60.4% of the vote. Here it took 26.2%. Four actresses got more than 13%: Kanchan Dubey, Arshiya Sharma (Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, 17.7%), Sangita Ghosh (Tu Juliet Jatt Di, 14.7%) and Aishana S Singh (Pati Brahmachari, 13.6%).

Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai had three nominees, who together took 22.4%.

Kanchan Dubey, winner of Most Popular Actress in a Supporting 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 10,065 of the 12,088 votes (83%). Kanchan Dubey won 27.6% of women’s votes and 18.2% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 74% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (5,954 votes).
Women aged 12–17 were Kanchan Dubey’s strongest group: 37.9% of their 2,739 votes went to Kanchan Dubey.
75% of Kanchan Dubey’s votes came from women under 25 (2,376 of 3,162).

It did not lead everywhere: voters aged 45–59 preferred Aasha Dnyate (18.1%) and voters aged 60+ preferred Aasha Dnyate (17.2%).

Same winner, different second choices

Kanchan Dubey won with women (27.6%) and with men (18.2%). Below the winner, women put Arshiya Sharma second (18.4%) and men put Aishana S Singh second (16.4%).

Aasha Dnyate: 1.6% of women’s votes, 7.6% of men’s, 4.7 times as popular with men.
Neha Mehta: 2.0% of women’s votes, 7.8% of men’s, about four times as popular with men.
Anita Raaj: 4.5% of women’s votes, 2.5% of men’s, 1.8 times as popular with women.
Vaishali Arora: 4.2% of women’s votes, 6.8% of men’s, 1.6 times as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

The six Rimjhim – Choti Umar Bada Safar wins were TV Serial, Actor and Actress in a Lead Role, TV Jodi, and Actor and Actress in a Supporting Role. The other three Television categories went to Naagin 7, Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah and Laughter Chefs S3.

In the voters’ own words

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

“She’s commendable”
“Very intelligent girl”
“Best actress”

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 (Television) result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Actress in a Supporting Role (Television) results on PolBol (12,088 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.