New Delhi (Tuesday: 19 February 2019): An investigation by Cobrapost has exposed 36 Bollywood celebrities ready to promote a political party for money by posting favourable messages on their social media accounts to help create a favorable environment in the run-up to 2019 elections. Among these celebs are actors, singers, stand-up comedians and dancers: Noted playback singers, Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Kailash Kher, Mika Singh and Baba Sehgal; actors Jackie Shroff, Shakti Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Sonu Sood, Amisha Patel, Mahima Chaudhry, Shreyas Talpade, Puneet Issar, Surendra Pal, Pankaj Dheer and his son Nikitin Dheer, Tisca Chopra, Deepshikha Nagpal, Akhilendra Mishra, Rohit Roy, Rahul Bhat, Salim Zaidi, Rakhi Sawant, Aman Verma, Hiten Tejwani and spouse Gauri Pradhan, Evelyn Sharma, Minissha Lamba, Koena Mitra, Poonam Pandey, Sunny Leonne; comedians Raju Srivastava, Sunil Pal, Rajpal Yadav, Upasana Singh, Krushna Abhishek and Vijay Ishwarlal Pawar; and choreographer Ganesh Acharya and dancer Sambhavana Seth. This is almost who’s who of the entertainment industry, both film and TV.
While we saw all these celebs succumbing to the lure of money and agreeing to indulge in this unethical and unlawful practice, there were some notable exceptions, though. When we approached Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi, Raza Murad and Saumya Tandon with our proposition, these celebs chose to go by their conscience and straightaway refused to play ball.
Representing a fictitious PR agency and taking on aliases, Cobrapost reporters approached these celebrities with a simple question: Would you be willing to promote a political party discreetly on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Almost all of the above celebs concurred to do it for a fee.
Originally posted by: DespicableMe
Nowadays, celebs get paid to tweet or support even politicians n political parties.
There was a sting "Operation Karaoke" with hidden cameras which exposed a lot of them:
https://www.cobrapost.com/blog/Press-Expose-Operation-Karaoke/1414
Cobrapost exposes three dozen Bollywood celebrities willing to post messages, as their personal opinion, on social media on behalf of political parties, for money. These celebrities include famous singers, comedians and actors from the entertainment industry, TV and films.
Cobrapost exposes three dozen Bollywood celebrities willing to post messages, as their personal opinion, on social media on behalf of political parties, for money. These celebrities include famous singers, comedians and actors from the entertainment industry, TV and films.
- Celebs agreed to promote the party in question to create a favourable environment before 2019 general elections. Some of them even tweeted without having been paid any money to show their eagerness to our reporters.
- Most of them were willing to accept the bulk of their fee in cash, which in other words means black money.
- Celebs would tweak the content on various issues to be provided to them before posting the same on their social media profiles to make it look as their own.
- They would defend the government even on controversial issues such as rapes and fatal accidents such as a bridge collapse here and there.
- They were willing to sign a dummy contract for endorsement of products to disguise the real nature of the proxy political campaigning.
- They agreed to send us their PAN and banking details, and many actually did so.
- They swore to keep the entire exercise a secret, and the agenda hidden.
- Some actors even proposed that they would proxy promote the political party in their press briefings during the promotion of a film or an event.
- Some even proposed to post videos on social media and make them go viral with the help of their followers.