On Saturday, April 8, 2023, netizens trolled YouTuber Ajit Anjum on the micro-blogging site Twitter on the occasion of his birthday. Hashtags like “PakodakingAjitAnjum” kept on trending throughout the day.
Twitter users shared thousands of memes showing the photos of the alleged journalist as a pakoda seller. Many people congratulated Ajit Anjum on his birthday as they called him a pakoda king. The alleged journalist also posted a video on his YouTube channel where he fact-checked this trend himself.
Ajit Anjum has been called a Pakoda King for a while, but it picked up crazy momentum on 8th April 2023 – his birthday. A Twitter handle named sharing genes wrote, “Pakoda King Ajit Anjum. never before have I laughed so much after seeing a Twitter trend.” His post included a meme in which Ajit Anjum wearing a suit is seen selling Pakodas. His Pakoda stall has a board that reads Pradhan Mantri Pakoda Rozgar.
A Twitter user Manoj Kumar wrote that this is a grand insult on someone’s birthday. With this post, he shared memes in which Ajit Anjum can be seen frying pakodas. The meme is created by cropping Ajit Anjum’s photograph and pasting it to a photograph of the pakoda sellers.
Another Twitter account Doctor Wait posted, “Hearty congratulations to Mr Anjum Sahab on his birthday, may Allah Ta’ala keep you healthy and may you live long and may your chicken pakoda business continues to grow day and night. Pakoda King Ajit Anjum.”
One Twitter user Ninda Turtle wrote, “Success story of Pakoda King Ajit Anjum through Start-up India initiative.”
In fact, this trend of Pakoda King Ajit Anjum started as netizens shared an image of a tweet Ajit Anjum claims he never posted. The tweet read, “I (Ajit Anjum) will sell chicken pakoras if Yogi Adityanath returns to power in 2022 Assembly Elections.” The screenshot of the tweet went viral, as did the pakoda memes.
During the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, such tweets suddenly went viral on social media, in which Ajit Anjum could be seen pledging that he will sell pakodas if Yogi Adityanath wins.
In his clarification posted at that time, Anjum said, “New photoshop of misinformation about me. Anything is being made viral by writing in my name. This shows how much the Bhakts are angry with me. My Twitter handle is not verified but this game is going on by photoshopping the blue tick. These are fake people.”
Ajit Anjum had earlier promised to perform salutations for CM Yogi if he achieves the vaccination target
It is important to note that Ajit Anjum has a history of making false promises and not keeping them. Earlier in September 2021, during COVID, he had challenged UP CM Yogi Adityanath that he would salute him ten times if Uttar Pradesh manages to administer 9 crore doses in three months’ time from July 1.
In the video that he released on July 2, he said, “Under that mega vaccination drive, ten lakh people will get vaccinated every day. According to that, there is a plan to vaccinate 10 lakh people per day, i.e. three crore in a month and nine crore people in 3 months. If the state achieves the target, I will salute CM 10 times”.
Ajit Anjum had reportedly failed to recognize that the state had achieved the target well before the time. The netizens had then trolled him demanding to keep his promise of ’10 salamis’ to the CM.