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Dhruv Rathee and Gaurav Taneja clash again, this time over UP govt paying ₹8 lakh to influencers
Dhruv Rathee and Gaurav Taneja clashed over UP government's new policy under which influencers can earn money for promoting government schemes.
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YouTubers Dhruv Rathee and Gaurav Taneja are again at odds, this time over the Uttar Pradesh government’s new social media policy under which influencers can earn as much as ₹8 lakh a month for promoting the government.
Dhruv Rathee, 29, slammed the policy in no uncertain terms, calling it misuse of taxpayers’ money.
“Uttar Pradesh Govt is saying it will pay up to ₹8 Lakh to Influencers to promote the government,” Rathee wrote on the social media platform X. “This is Legalized Bribery. From Tax Payer's Money. Any influencer who does this should be publicly shamed,” he added in his now-viral post, which has been viewed over 2 million times.
Gaurav Taneja, the 38-year-old IITian and former pilot who turned to social media content creation, hit back at Rathee and offered a starkly different take on the issue. Taneja defended the scheme and asked whether newspapers and TV channels who get paid to run government ads should also be ashamed.
Take a look at the exchange below:
The contentious exchange sparked a slew of reactions.
“A party can pay with Electoral Bond Money if they want to promote their party and their propaganda but they want to use hard working taxpayers money for social media influencers in the name of promoting govt schemes. We are against it,” one X user wrote.
“Strange you don't know the difference between Advertisements and Promotion by individuals,” another said.
This is not the first time that Dhruv Rathee and Gaurav Taneja have engaged in a war of words on social media. In June 2024, the two also clashed over the ‘India vs Bharat’ debate.
UP government’s scheme
The Uttar Pradesh Cabinet has approved the Uttar Pradesh Digital Media Policy, 2024, under which select influencers will receive state advertisements for promoting UP government schemes on their social media channels.
Under this policy, influencers will be paid a maximum of ₹5 lakh, ₹4 lakh, ₹3 lakh and ₹2 lakh for their accounts on X, Facebook and Instagram.
"The category wise maximum payout limit for videos, shorts, podcast payments on YouTube has been fixed at ₹8 lakh, ₹7 lakh, ₹6 lakh and ₹4 lakh per month respectively," said a press statement.
