The 2020 edition of the Indian Motorcycle of the Year or IMOTY awards recently concluded its jury round. IMOTY, regarded as the highest honour that can be bestowed on a two-wheeler made or assembled in India, recognises the most outstanding motorcycle launched in a particular calendar year. The motorcycle in question must have a number of attributes to win. For starters, it must have strong relevance for the Indian two-wheeler market. And, it should also have set new benchmarks in the segment it operates in.
The IMOTY jury this year comprises of Rahul Ghosh and Dipayan Dutta from Auto Today, Jared Soloman and Arup Das from autoX, Aspi Bhathena and Sarmad Kadiri from Bike India, Sirish Chandran from evo, Kartik Ware and Pablo Chatterjee from Motoring World, Abhay Verma and Rohit Paradkar from Overdrive, and Vikrant Singh from BikeWale. Now even though quite a few motorcycles were launched in 2019, the said jury shortlisted the strongest contenders for the jury round.
This year, the shortlist included the Bajaj Avenger Street 160 and the Pulsar 125, the Benelli Imperiale 400, the Hero Xtreme 200S and the Xpulse 200, the Honda CB300R, the Jawa, the KTM 125 Duke, the Suzuki Gixxer 250, and the Yamaha MT-15. And for a jury member to be able to vote for a particular motorcycle, the motorcycle had to be present for the jury round in rideable condition.
Now here’s how the voting works. Every jury member has 25 points to award. The maximum a jury member can give a motorcycle is 10 points. And the jury member must award points to at least five motorcycles. Also, the top two motorcycles cannot be awarded the same points, which means every jury member signals his or her clear winner.
The winner of the IMOTY 2020, in the meantime, will be announced on the 18th of December. May the best motorcycle win!
