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

Yashika Sharma Got More Votes Than Anyone Else at IFTA 2026

By Sneha Arora

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:24 am

She got 19,102 verified votes, 59.9% of the biggest category of IFTA 2026, and led with every group of voters.

The most votes of IFTA 2026

Sixteen actresses were on the ballot for Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Television) at IFTA 2026. One of them took more votes than all the others combined.

Yashika Sharma (Rimjhim – Choti Umar Bada Safar) won with 19,102 of 31,875 verified votes, 59.9%. The runner-up, Jasmeet Kaur (Tu Juliet Jatt Di), got 17.4%. The winner’s share was 3.4 times the runner-up’s.

Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Television) drew 31,875 votes, more than any other IFTA 2026 category. Yashika Sharma’s 19,102 is the most votes any nominee received across all 30 categories.

Yashika Sharma, winner of Most Popular Actress in a Lead 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 26,835 of the 31,875 votes (84%). Yashika Sharma won 61.2% of women’s votes and 52.4% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 79% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (15,810 votes).
Women aged 12–17 were Yashika Sharma’s strongest group: 74.7% of their 8,460 votes went to Yashika Sharma.
75% of Yashika Sharma’s votes came from women under 25 (14,322 of 19,102).

Yashika Sharma led in every age group with at least 30 voters.

Same winner, different second choices

Yashika Sharma won with women (61.2%) and with men (52.4%). Both put Jasmeet Kaur second (18.1% of women, 14.0% of men).

Neha Harsora: 1.3% of women’s votes, 7.0% of men’s, 5.4 times as popular with men.
Prapti Shukla: 5.1% of women’s votes, 10.5% of men’s, about twice as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

Hers was one of six wins for Rimjhim – Choti Umar Bada Safar across the nine Television categories: TV Serial, Actor and Actress in a Lead Role, TV Jodi, and Actor and Actress in a Supporting Role.

In the voters’ own words

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

“Very intelligent and beautiful actress.”
“She is very talented, hardworking actress.”
“This is my favourite 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 Lead Role (Television) result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Television) results on PolBol (31,875 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.