On March 21, Twitter user Alok Bhatt noticed an unusual spike in a hashtag on Twitter. #DYChandrachudBestCJI trended consistently on social media leaving several Netizens amused and bewildered. The hashtag was being trended by accounts that usually tweet on PR campaigns surrounding Bollywood and other marketing campaigns.
Do you know #DYChandrachudBestCJI trended today- must be a first for any CJI. Other than passing strictures and telling whole world how SC judges hear 200 petitions every week- it seems CJI has now a dedicated PR machinery across seminar circuit, media and even social media! pic.twitter.com/AgqFNmgxT3
— Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) March 21, 2023
Bhatt shared a screenshot of three tweets with similar text. Two of the tweets in the screenshot had the same text. In follow-up tweets, Bhatt shared a series of videos of screen scrolls where tweets on hashtags promoting Bollywood and some political parties could be seen. He noted that the same accounts were used to promote Congress, Shah Rukh Khan and phone companies.
Here is a sample of bots who trended in favour of CJI , Cong, SRK, and some phone cos – brilliant job pic.twitter.com/ZJu84g45cs
— Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) March 21, 2023
Our research found that the hashtag was used only on March 21, 2023. There were over 12,500 tweets that included the hashtag. Out of these, 10,400+ tweets originated from India. The majority of the tweets were done between 5 AM UTC to 2 PM UTC or 10:30 AM IST to 7:30 PM IST. Such time-bound trends are one of the signs of a PR campaign.
We checked if any verified accounts were pushing the trend. We could not spot any notable verified handles pushing the trend that pointed towards a low-budget PR campaign.
Next, we checked ten random accounts that shared a tweet with the hashtag. Only four Twitter Blue Verified accounts were found to be promoting the hashtag. No legacy account was promoting the hashtag. Six non-verified, Blue or Legacy, were used for the research.
In the next step, we looked at their profiles. Four out of six non-verified accounts and one of the Blue verified accounts promoted another hashtag, #e4MediaClassHasNoClass, which was against Exchange4Media portal on March 22.
A set of such accounts were promoting #DYChandrachudBestCJI and #BBxSRK on March 21.
Several netizens were left amused by this Twitter trend, given that the highest judicial authority in the country would surely not need a Twitter PR campaign like Bollywood does to ensure their movies work.
Hawww!!!!!
— India Forever (@_IndiaForever) March 22, 2023
Mr Manneey using bots to trend (read copy paste ) about his “goodness”. #DYChandrachudBestCJI
🙈🙉🙊 pic.twitter.com/vnYICuSejV
#Chandrachud ji mere school mein monitor ka election hain aap approve kar dijiye.
— India First (@yogjan15) March 21, 2023
#DYChandrachudBestCJI #CJIChandrachud
I think Supreme Court should take suo moto and ask Twitter to provide details of accounts who are defaming CJI Chandrachud by acting as bots and copy pasting same content to mislead people.
— Facts (@BefittingFacts) March 22, 2023
In June 2020, OpIndia spotted a similar campaign for Congress that can be checked here.
