Cobrapost, a non-profit website, conducted an expose on more than three dozen Bollywood celebrities who were willing to promote any political party on their social media in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections for a price.

Among these celebs are directors, 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 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 few exceptions were Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi, Raza Murad and Saumya Tandon. They turned down such propositions and refused to get involved.

Cobrapost reporters pretended to be from a fictitious PR agency and approached these celebrities with a proposal to promote a political party discreetly on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.