Sunny Leone, Sonu Sood and Shakti Kapoor are among the three dozen Bollywood celebrities exposed in Operation Karaoke – a sting operation conducted to expose those willing to endorse political parties on multiple social media platforms in return for money. The list of celebrities also included singers Kailash Kher, Abhijeet Bhattacharya, comedian Rajpal Yadav and others. The celebrities demanded between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 20 lakh per promotional message.
#OperationKaraoke An investigation by Cobrapost exposes three dozen Bollywood celebrities, including famous singers, comedians & actors, willing to post messages as their personal opinion on social media, on behalf of political parties, All for money.https://t.co/LUpB5REN13 pic.twitter.com/RTIxvlg23c
— Cobrapost (@cobrapost) February 19, 2019
During the operation, reporters masquerading as agents of a fictitious PR agency based in Delhi approached celebrities and asked if they were willing to promote a political party in the run-up to the 2019 general elections. BJP, Aam Aadmi Party and Congress were the names used for the operation. The agency said that these were strictly for narrative purposes and none of them had any actual involvement.
Some of the prominent names on the list were actors Vivek Oberoi, Poonam Pandey, Evelyn Sharma, Puneet Issar, Tisca Chopra, Amisha Patel, Shreyas Talpade, Rakhi Sawant, Rohit Roy, Minissha Lamba, Mahima Chuadhary, singers like Kailash Kher, Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Mika Singh, comedians Rajpal Yadav, Raju Srivastava and choreographer Ganesh Acharya.
The celebrities were asked if they would promote various Government schemes such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and Ujjwala scheme, and defend the Government on controversial issues like rape and fatal accidents like bridge collapse. According to the agency, the investigation was conducted “to expose the celebrities willing to endorse a political agenda in return for monetary gains.”
The celebrities were asked to put up four to five messages on their social media handles in a month. They were presented with the option of payment in cash (black money) and in cheques. The fee demanded by them ranged from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 20 lakh per message. Sonu Sood perhaps cited the maximum amount, demanding Rs 20 crores for a span of eight months.
Recommended
“There can be five or seven [posts/tweets]. My messages will be very, very strong and nice. If I say I will do only four not five on a given day, I will repeat something written by somebody else, for example, and I will add my answer to it. Is that okay? I will do all that but I feel that the price 1.5 crore you have quoted, it should be at least 2.5,” said Sonu Sood. When reached by the news agency, he defended his actions saying there was nothing wrong in endorsing a political party/ideology one believed in.
Shakti Kapoor, who had earlier applauded demonetisation, asked for payment in black money. Comedian Sunil Pal agreed to ridicule Rahul Gandhi by making videos in return for payment.
A few celebrities like Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi, Raza Murad and Saumya Tandon refused the proposal. “Unfortunately, we will not be able to do political campaigning. We were invited to many elections [for campaigning], but we never do that because Sir always keeps himself off political campaigning,” said Arshad Warsi’s manager after having a talk with the actor.
Image courtesy: Cobrapost