Brilliant Job - You guys really deserved this one!

For the absolutely gorgeous 88 couples who did not make it, a big congratulations once again for making it to the TOP 100.

I hope you will now join me in congratulating these amazing 12.

Let us enjoy the rest of the journey.

Meet Mr. Adil Jal Darkhanawala, Editor-in-Chief, ZigWheels.com

The “Bossman”, as his colleagues lovingly call him, is the heart & soul of ZigWheels. ZigWheels, one of India’s premiere automotive content websites is his baby, and with a gargantuan experience in the field of automotive journalism, no one slices and dices cars or bikes like Adil. As the former founding editor of magazines like Car & Bike International, Overdrive, Car India, Bike India and Commercial Vehicle, the “Bossman” is regarded as a pioneer when it comes to introducing India to the field of auto journalism. As the Editor-in-Chief of ZigWheels, Adil is passion personified when it comes to bikes and cars. His signature flair, flamboyance and foresight are what drive Team ZigWheels to settle for nothing but the very best when it comes to entertaining and educating auto enthusiasts all over.

Meet Ms. Tanya Chaitanya - Editor, Femina Magazine. She has given India’s largest selling women’s magazine—Femina—a contemporary, fresh and modern feel. Tanya has worked for BBC as a Producer in London. She has also worked with The Times of India in Mumbai and Cosmopolitan magazine.

These are some members of the Jury panel who will take over from the internal Jury panel and preside over the final two rounds.

There is now consensus amongst the Jury. After a tough battle for last 2 slots, we now have a firm list on our hands. I can look over my window to the sea, and I can see the tides are rising.

Get ready to meet 12 amazing couples, who have made it to the next round.

(P.S. For those who did not get the ‘white smoke’ bit in the title, please refer to my earlier post titled “Holy Smokes”)

Early morning 5am, I was pondering on whether to open/close a comment (reproduced below) on the confession box. I know you guys are tired of the topic of ‘unfairness’ - but it is our duty to address the concern of every participant.  I have removed the name of the disgruntled couple so we can focus on the issues raised. The only reason I put this on the blog, is so we can address similar concern from many others.
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Dear Mr.Sandip & Co.
What do u people want to prove? TGDC is behaving like a ‘100 choohe khaake billi haj ko gayi’  U Pls tel me, do u honestly think,

U had / have any professional setup to detect fake voting ? or u intentionally let people cast fake votes ?

(Team GDC - No Sir, we did not have any professional setup to detect fake voting, at the point of casting. In fact we didnt know (till GDC) of the 101 ways to cast a fake vote. We are learning more from the comments opened in ‘confession box’. What we did have was a robust data capture mechanism to log every attempt at vote, time stamp, originating IP etc. Once we had the log in place, we knew we could at least detect gross violations using simple algorithms to detect time patterns, originating ID etc, and then trust the human brain.(For e.x. your application had several hundred votes caste from corporate ID “nilwaste.com” in matter of 5 minutes - and that URL links to a web-page for Magnum projects (http://www.nilwaste.com), where none of the links work. That told us the page was just a decoy. Then we found from a “whois” that nilwaste.com is registered with a gentleman that is possibly your namesake. We also found Nilwaste is a company registered in the UK nilwaste.co.uk - That made the voting pattern suspect, Sir)

How is fair to waste thousands of able (at least to some extent) couples precious time in the name of a contest ?

(Team GDC - It is a personal choice made by couples to enter TGDC. Whether it is waste of time or great entertainment, is again a personal perspective)

how do u compensate the vote losses caused in the earlier stage4 of voting ? isn’t it your responsibility ?

(Team GDC - there was no reason to compensate - because none of the votes were lost - unless those were created for bogus IDs. All undelivered emails were re-sent at least twice. We still knew people could have lost a few votes, but the judgement criteria divided voting into slabs - so we knew few losses would not impact anyone’s chances)

r u an amateur to start a contest of this magnitude n then mid change the rules n ur so called e-mail infrastructure ? how do u justify the loss caused to genuine people’s time n effort ?

(Team GDC - We beefed up the infrastructure - all we did was add a couple more mail gateway providers. No rules were changed. Yes - after pouring over false voting logs and estimating the time, money and effort spent, we now know the loss can’t be justified) 

How do u justify the inclusion of people in top 100 who have not even completed the application ?

(Team GDC - please read an earlier post on this topic titled letter from dilip d’souza)

how do u justify the selection of people with fake votes ?

(Team GDC - this is a tough one, but we will take it - yes there are people on TOP 100 list who have false votes - we decided that we are going to let people be who have been creative and patient to cast a few dozen odd emails here and there - we also let go of some big guys who used email aliases (gmail) on their corporate IDs - this was a grey area, because we did not know whether the votes were cast with their permission or not -the one group which certainly got penalized are those who tampered corporate vote IDs - these we realized are deliberate malicious attempts to bypass the ‘honor system’ on which we were running the game)

Pls let me know y not a legal compensation can be demanded for all such mis-deeds of TGDC ?
* (Team GDC - no one is denying that you do not have a right to demand a compensation - you will need to consult your legal attorneys Sir)

Kindly note, I talked to Mitsubishi Motors PR n I have requested for the clarifications in this regard.

(Team GDC - we have forwarded your Voting logs, Application logs, IP logs to the appropriate authorities to help them understand your issues, if any with TGDC)