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Bollywood celebrities exposed for taking money to promote political parties

Indian investigative website Cobrapost published a report on its sting, Operation Karaoke, that exposed Bollywood celebrities accepting money to promote political parties.

In the run up to the India’s 2019 elections, Cobrapost video recorded around 36 Bollywood personalities striking deals for promoting various political parties’ ideology on their social media platforms. These celebrities were also willing to accept most of their of payments in cash to evade taxes.

The sting began with Cobrapost creating a fictitious PR agency and approaching directors, actors, singers, stand-up comedians and dancers with a question, “Would you be willing to promote a political party discreetly on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram?”

The sting operation revealed that 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 were willing to post favorable messages on social media for political parties in exchange for money.

Other actors who were on this list included 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 Leone, comedians Raju Srivastava, Sunil Pal, Rajpal Yadav, Upasana Singh, Krushna Abhishek and Vijay Ishwarlal Pawar, and choreographer Ganesh Acharya and dancer Sambhavana Seth.

The price ranged from 200,000 INR to 50,000 INR per message, and the report stated that some of the stars even demanded money ranging to 20 crore INR for an eight-month contract. They even agreed to accept the money in cash, which necessarily meant black money.

Meanwhile, celebrities such as Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi, Raza Murad and Saumya Tandon straightaway refused the proposal and chose to go by their conscience.

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