Manju Pavagada has won the title of the eighth season of Bigg Boss Kannada. He has defeated KP Aravind by a narrow margin to lift the trophy with Divya Uruduga ending at third place.

Bigg Boss Kannada Winner Manju Pavagada
Manju Pavagada is Bigg Boss Kannada season 8.PR Handout

Votes and Prize Money
The curtains for Bigg Boss Kannada 8 were dropped with a grand finale on Sunday, 8 August. Manju Pavagada secured 45+ lakh votes to emerge victorious in Colors Kannada's show. KP Aravind ended as the runner-up with 43+ lakh votes.

Manju Pavagada was honoured with a trophy and a cash prize of Rs 53 lakh while the first runner-up got Rs 11 lakh cash prize. The comedian was not a favourite contestant when the show was suspended mid-way and the trends indicated that it would be a cakewalk for KP Aravind.

However, Manju Pavagada apparently worked on his shortcomings and emerged as a better player than KP Aravind. There is a belief among the fans that the votes might have been divided between Aravind and his significant other Divya Uruduga. Thus helping Manja to win the trophy.

Divya Uruduga, who had garnered over 11 lakh votes, got Rs 6 lakh cash prize. Vaishnavi Gowda garnered over 10 lakh votes and got Rs 3.5 lakh cash prize.

Prashanth Sambargi had secured over six lakh votes and got Rs 2.5 lakh cash prize. It has to be noted that KP Aravind had got Rs 2 lakh for winning a series of tasks in the final week of Sudeep-hosted show.

In eighth season, all the top five contestants have walked away with cash prize which was not the case in earlier seasons where only the winner used to get the cash prize.  

Bigg Boss Kannada Finale
KP Aravind, Divya Uruduga and Manju.PR Handout
Contestant Prize
Manju Rs 53 lakh
KP Aravind Rs 11 Lakh
Divya Uruduga Rs 6 lakh
Vaishnavi Rs 3.5 lakh
Prashanth Rs 2.5 lakh

The eighth season, which was supposed to be kick-started last October 2020, was delayed due to Covid-19. After much planning and taking enough precautions, Colors Kannada's show took off on 28 February. However, like a rain-affected cricket match, Bigg Boss Kannada was halted midway on 8 May after the Karnataka government imposed a lockdown to prevent the spread of the second wave of the pandemic.

The contestants were sent home, but to everyone's surprise, the show, for the first time in the history of this format, was restarted after getting suspended. On June 23, Colors Kannada kicked off the second innings.

Manju Pavagada
Manju Pavagada.Colors Kannada Facebook

20 Contestants
Vaishnavi Gowda, Vishwanath Haveri, Aravind KP, Nidhi Subbaiah, Bro Gowda aka Shamanth Gowda, Geetha Bharathi Bhat, Manju Pavagada aka Lag Manju, Divya Suresh, Chandrakala Mohan, Raghu Gowda aka Vine Store, Prashanth Sambargi, Divya Urduga, Rajeev and Nirmala Chennapa are the participants who entered the Bigg Boss Kannada house on the day one.