Last year it was the Taj Mahal that attracted voting frenzy among the global online community as they polled to keep the Indian monument among the wonders of the world. The start of New Year 2008 saw the Bachchan trio from Bollywood attracting unparalleled polling interest. The first family of Bollywood netted most of the votes in Indian portal Webdunia's unique popularity contest for 2007, which had a fair share of drama, swings and counter-swings.
Webdunia, India's first multi-lingual portal, and available in 9 regional languages, decided to let 100 million net users decide for themselves the global personality of the year as well as who were the most eminent Indians in politics, cricket, sports, films and the best Indian movie of 2007.
Polling was free and the online selection, open for netizens between December 21 and January 10 saw over 100,000 (one lakh) users cast their votes. The results tabulated the polls cast across all nine regional languages - Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, Bengali and Gujarati.
And some of the results surprised the pundits no end. In categories where the Bachchan trio – baap, beta and bahu – figured, it was a no contest as far as the online voters were concerned, as the three garnered most of the votes polled. Was it something to do with numerology that the fourth member of the famous family and the only one not to share the winning AB initials, did not figure in the voting list?
Aishwarya: the most popular actress and the most eminent woman in India
The Webdunia poll did overturn quite a few myths. For instance, who said marriage affects the popularity of Bollywood heroines? Going by the poll results, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan emerged as the overwhelming favourite in not just the hustings to decide the most popular actress but also the most eminent woman in India as well. She grabbed a little over half the votes polled to emerge as the most eminent woman personality of 2007, leaving far behind luminaries like Congress president Sonia Gandhi (17.69% cent votes), super cop Kiran Bedi (14.61%), tennis ace Sania Mirza, (6.54%), and the first woman president of India, Pratibha Patil (3.54%). Others in the category who included firebrand politicians Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalitha and chief ministers Mayawati, Vasundhara Raje and Shiela Dikshit could get only insignificant number of votes.
Aishwarya's margin of victory in the best Indian actress category was even better as she netted 64.4% of the votes in this category, with the second favourite Rani Mukherjee trailing distantly at 18.87%.
Thankfully, the actress did not get nominated in the sexiest actress of 2007 category, otherwise who knows what the result might have been. This title was swept by the sultry Bipasha Basu with more than 55% votes polled. Wannabe contender for this slot, known to shoot from the hip, Mallika Sherawat will have to pout a bit harder as she came a distant second with 17.77%. Even the voters from the south clearly preferred the attractions of these two as southern starlets Abhinayshree, Nayantara and Namita did not get too high a percentage of votes.
If you are wondering how the nominations for each category were arrived at – it was decided by a team of 9 editors of Webdunia, who made a shortlist of 10 personalities based on the number of times their name appeared in the news and features columns of the portal as well as user searches made on the language search engine in 2007. For each category, voters could only make one choice and the program was designed to avoid multiple votes by the same person.
If Aishwarya swept the women's categories, then in the men's category, it was her father- in-law who led all the way as he grabbed the most popular actor title. To the surprise of poll pundits, Shahrukh who was the year's highest tax payer from Bollywood, polled a measly 8.8% votes with the two Bachchans grabbing the lion's share of the votes. While Amitabh got around 40% of the votes, Abhishek came in second with 23.71%, pipping Hrithik Roshan (13.58%) and southern favourite Rajnikant ( 4.02% ). The battle of the Khans is clearly a thing of the past with Salman not even getting nominated, while Aamir lagged behind with just 3.43% of the votes.
Voting trends were fascinating ... at one stage it looked as though Shahrukh's 'Chak De' was ahead in the poll hustings as the best film for 2007, but the Bachchan family's loyal fans clearly garnered a lot of online support for 'Guru', as it surged ahead in the final reckoning. Shivaji, the southern hit, starring Rajni, gave stiff competition to Om Shanti Om but still only finished fourth.
George Bush,Sunita Williams and LN Mittal the world's most powerful
There were some surprising twists and turns in the most popular personality in the globe category as well with Sunita Williams at one point seriously threatening the American president George Bush. However the "World's most powerful man" kept his image intact, nudging ahead with 29.84% votes while Williams came in second with 24.45% votes and steel baron Lakshmi Mittal third with 22.03%.
In the Indian category to decide the country's favourite personality, it was Amitabh Bachchan who ruled getting nearly 40% of the votes, ahead of former president Abdul Kalam ( 16.34%) and Mukesh Ambani (14.88%). The only woman to get nominated in this category – Lata Mangeshkar – could muster only 6.98%, but she still fared better than Rahul Gandhi, Ratan Tata, Sri Sri Ravishankar, and Manmohan Singh. However, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Baba Ramdev scored better than her. The polling closed one day before Ratan Tata hurled his Nano missile on the world – one wonders if the timing was different, would the results have been different?
Incidentally, in the global category, there were at least four women nominees, while the Indian category saw just one – a gender trend that is quite consistent with the results of television reality shows here in the country. Much comment has been passed on the way women contestants are consistently voted out of reality shows.
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi once again demonstrated his huge mass appeal by emerging as the most popular politician polling 37.89% of the votes, followed by Lalu Yadav with 21.61% of the votes. Significantly, Lal Krishna Advani scored better than Sonia and Manmohan?
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi once again demonstrated his huge mass appeal by emerging as the most popular politician polling 37.89% of the votes, followed by Lalu Yadav with 21.61% of the votes. Significantly, Lal Krishna Advani scored better than Sonia and Manmohan?
The cricketers did not compete for the best sportsperson category. And that allowed tennis ace Sania to rush to the Net, ahead of Viswanathan Anand. Clearly a world title in a mind game does not still compare with the glamorous world of tennis.
Here are the final results:
1. World's most popular global citizen (George Bush (29.84%), Sunita Williams
(24.45%), LN Mittal (22.03%), Vladimir Putin (4.99%), Hillary Clinton (4.89%), Manmohan Singh (3.94%), Pervez Musharraf ( 2.98%), David Beckham ( 2.75%), Maria Sharapova (2.58%), Indira Nooyi (1.54%)
2. India 's most popular citizen ( Amitabh Bachhan (39. 91%), APJ Abdul Kalam (16.34%), Mukesh Ambani (14.88%), Atal Behari Vajpayee (9.15%), Baba Ramdev (7.89%), Lata Mangeshkar (6.98%), Rahul Gandhi (1.6%), Ratan Tata (1.31%), Manmohan Singh ( 1.2%), Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ( 0.75%)
3. Most popular Indian politician (Narendra Modi (37.89%), Laloo Prasad Yadav (21.61%), Lal Krishan Advani (12.57% ), Sonia Gandhi (9.90%), Manmohan Singh (8.01%), Rahul Gandhi (3.51%), Kumari Mayawati (3.1%), M Karunanidhi (1.56%), P Chidambaram (1.31% ), Prakash Karat (0.53%)
4. Most popular Indian woman Aishwarya Rai (51.67% ), Sonia Gandhi (17.69%), Kiran Bedi (14.61%), Sania Mirza (6.54%), Pratibha Patil (3.54%), Mayawati ( 2.81%), Vasundhra Raje (1.79%), Jayalalitha (0.84%), Shiela Dikshit (0.26%), Mamata Banerjee (0.25%)
5. India's most popular actor Amitabh Bachchan (40.47%), Abhishek Bachchan (23.71%), Hrithik Roshan (13.58%), Shahrukh Khan (8.89%), Rajnikant ( 4.02%)*, Aamir Khan (3.43%), Akshay Kumar (3.35%), Sanjay Dutt (1.38%), Chiranjeevi (0.66%)*, Mohan Lal (0.51%)*
(*Actors are from South India)
6. Most popular actress (Aishwarya Rai (64.66%), Rani Mukherjee ( 18.87%), Dipika Padukone (4.89%), Katrina Kaif ( 3.79%), Priyanka Chopra (2.66%), Vidya
Balan (2.50%), Kareena Kapoor (0.97%), Shreya (0.93%)*, Ramya (0.4%)*, Anushka (0.34%)*
(*Actors are from South India)
7. Best Movie of the year (Guru ( 45.98%), Chak De India (36.56%), Om
Shanthi Om, (5.67%), Shivaji (4.43%) Bhul Bhailaya (2.86%), Gandhi My Father (2.07%), Namaste London (1.25%), Aap Ka Surur (0.56%), Chocolate (0.33%), Duniya (0.31%)
8. India's most sexy actress - Bipasha Basu ( 55.83%), Mallika Sherawat ( 17.7%), Shilpa Shetty (6.72%), Kareena Kapur (5.61%), Neha Dhupia (4.42%), Celina Jetley (3.42%), and the 3 actresses from South India -- Nayantara (2.36% ), Namita (1.77%), Nisha Kothari (1.77%), Abhinayashree ( 0.33%)
9. Most popular cricketer - Sachin Tendulkar ( 38.97%), MS Dhoni (29.05%), Saurav Ganguly (18.34%), Yuvraj Singh (9.39%), Irfan Pathan ( 1.45%), Rahul Dravid (1.20%), Anil Kumble (0.87%), Zaheer Khan (0.35%), Harbhajan Singh (0.23%), Gautam Gambhir (0.14%)
10. Most popular Indian sports person - Sania Mirza (58.84%), Viswanathan Anand (28.7%), Dilip Singh Khali (4.59%), Naraian Karthikeyan (2.36%), Leander Paes (2.04%), Baichung Bhutia (1.47%), Dola Banerjee (0.69%), Prabhjot Singh (0.55%), Jeev Milkha Singh (0.43%), Abhinav Bindra (0.32%)
About Webdunia
Webdunia, India's largest multi-lingual portal, offers quality content to the people of different religions, cultures and age groups. Nine Indian language portals of Webdunia offer channels like news from the world of politics, sports and human interest stories, Bollywood, Life-Style, Religion, Science, IT, Career, Astrology, Literature, etc. Live cricket commentary, ticker and Webdunia Poll are some other major highlights of Webdunia language portals.
Email service is available in 11 languages—Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.
Headquartered in Indore, Webdunia Content and Technology development centres operate from Chennai, Indore and Thiruvananthapuram.
Notes to the Editors
1. Webdunia portals are in 9 languages
2. Email service is available in 11 languages-Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati,
Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.
For media queries, please contact:
At Strategic Communications and PR Counsel
Sanjiv Kataria
+91 98100 48095 +91 98100 48091
sanjiv.kataria@webdunia.com
sanjiv.kataria@gmail.com
At
Sandeep Sisodiya
customer.care@webdunia.net
