Priyanka Chopra’s Miss World Win Was ‘Rigged’, Claims Ex-Miss Barbados After 22 Years

Former Miss Barbados, Leilani McConney, has alleged that actor Priyanka Chopra’s big win in the Miss World pageant in 2000 was ‘rigged’ and that it was a result of undue favouritism. She shared her claims in a video on YouTube and investigations are underway.

This comes amidst the ongoing controversy regarding the win of Miss Texas R'Bonney Gabriel at the Miss USA pageant as McConney alleged that Chopra's win was due to bias and the unfair advantage garnered by favouritism from the organisers and sponsors. In her video, the former Miss Barbados detailed all the 'favouritism' and bias shown towards Chopra during the pageant that was sponsored by an Indian broadcasting network.

Sharing photos and screenshots of the news snippets, McConney said, "I literally went through the same thing at Miss World. Me, I went through that. I was Miss Barbados and I went to Miss World, and the year I went, Miss India won.”

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"Mind you, Miss India had won the previous year. The sponsor was also Zee TV, an Indian cable station. They sponsored the entire Miss World. Our sashes had Zee TV, and then our country," she further added.

As McConney recalled the pattern of favouritism shown towards Chopra, she said that the actor passed the swimsuit round 'in a dress'. She said, "Priyanka Chopra was the only person who was allowed to keep her sarong on. Apparently, she was using some skin tone cream to even out her skin tone, and it was still splotchy. I'm not saying that it was a bleaching cream, it was a skin-tone cream. And it didn’t work, so she didn't want to remove her sarong. So, during the actual judgement, she's literally in a dress.”

"If you're a contestant in a pageant and somebody favours you, what will you do about it? Why wouldn't you go along with it," she asked.

McConney further claimed that Chopra was 'unlikeable' and that she was 'not nice'. From meals delivered to her room, solo press calls to photo shoots that "Nobody else in the Asian region, nobody else was ever called for," Chopra was favoured in everything she did, McConney claimed in her video.

As per her claims, Chopra had photoshoots done by the beach even before she won the pageant. "Meanwhile, we’re all grouped together in this sandpi," she said.

McConney also alleged that the designer who designed Chopra's gown designed the outfits for all other contestants. However, she said that while theirs 'fit like crap', "Her gown was immaculate.”

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She further revealed that the contestants walked off the stage to protest the unfairness when Chopra was 'eventually crowned the winner'.

Indian contestants have won the Miss World pageant six times till date including Reita Faria in 1966, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in 1994, Diana Hayden in 1997, Yukta Mookhey in 1999, Chopra in 2000, and Manushi Chillar in 2017.

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