NEW DELHI: More than 30 Bollywood celebrities, including Jackie Shroff, Kailash Kher and Vivek Oberoi, have allegedly been caught in a sting operation for agreeing to promote the agenda of parties on social media platforms in exchange for money, online portal Cobrapost claimed on Tuesday.
Operation Karaoke by Cobrapost had its reporters posing as representatives from a public relations company and meeting actors, singers, dancers and TV stars through their managers to allegedly strike a deal ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing a press conference here, Cobrapost editor-in-chief Aniruddha Bahl said the sting revolves around 36 celebrities agreeing to post messages on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts to help create a favourable environment for certain political parties in the run up to the elections.
The celebs, most of them second rung TV and film stars, agreed to tweet content on various issues to be provided to them before posting the same on their social media pages to make it look as their own, he alleged.
“They would defend the Government even on controversial issues such as rape and fatal accidents such as bridge collapses. They were even willing to sign a dummy contract for endorsement of products to disguise the real nature of the proxy political campaigning that they were willing to do,” Bahl said.
According to Cobrapost, the party in question was, in most cases, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and the Congress in some instances.
Many celebrities agreed to share their PAN number and banking details but most preferred cash, he claimed.
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