Fact Check: Jio Holi promotional offer rewards Rs 700 to customers? No, this is a scam
Claim: Jio customers can avail Rs 700 as a reward on the occasion of Holi. The offer also mentions that PMMY beneficiaries can get Rs 1,999 into their accounts.
Fact: The claim is false. Jio has no such promotional offer, and the reward for PMMY beneficiaries does not exist. Both are scams.
Hyderabad: For many people across the country, Holi is an occasion to spend time with their friends and family. The vibrant celebrations of the festival of colours are not just limited to individuals. Companies also make the most of the occasion by offering discounts and rewards. One such alleged promotional offer has taken social media by storm, amassing over 15.3 million views across just four Facebook posts.
The offer claims that Jio customers can avail of Rs 700 as a reward. This claim is made in four videos of the same promotional offer uploaded to Facebook on March 12.
The video contains an image of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries which leads Jio, logos of Jio Digital Life and JioCinema, along with a voiceover that says, “On the occasion of Holi, all Jio customers can avail Rupees 700 reward. Please click, to send the money quickly to your bank (account).” (Transcribed from Hindi audio)
The text on the post also reads, “On the occasion of Holi, all Jio customers can avail Rupees 700 reward. Please click, to send the money quickly to your bank.” (Translated from Hindi) (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter has found that the claim is false. The promotional offer is a scam. Jio has not issued any offer for its customers to avail a reward of Rs 700 for Holi.
On the official website of Jio, we did not find any offer or promotion stating that customers can avail a reward of Rs 700 for Holi.
The social media handles of Jio, including Instagram and Facebook, also did not contain any information regarding the Holi promotional offer.
The Meta Ad Library, where all the active advertisements on the Meta platforms can be searched and viewed, does not show any Holi promotional offers by the company’s official social media accounts.
We clicked on the viral promotional offers and were redirected to a website with the URL ‘festivvholiiioff.xyz’. However, the URL of the official website of Jio is ‘jio.com’, which is not the official site. An archive of the website can be found here.
On the website, we do not see any promotional offer related to Jio. However, the website contains an image of prime minister Narendra Modi, the logo of ‘Digital India’, and an image of a digital scratch card which stated, “Through the medium of ‘Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana’ everyone can avail free 1999 Rupees in their account. To send this to your account, scratch below.” (Translated from Hindi)
“Every Indian citizen gets a gift of up to Rs 1,999 in their account under Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana,” is stated on the website. (Translated from Hindi)
The website of the scheme does not contain information regarding a reward of Rs 1,999 for all citizens. We found that there are no news reports or social media posts regarding the same.
This makes it clear that both the Rs 700 Jio Holi offer claim and the Rs 1,999 Mudra Yojana claim are false. These are scams trying to mislead netizens with promises of getting easy money.
We used Scam Adviser to check the authenticity of the Website URL ‘festivvholiiioff.xyz’. Calling it a suspicious website, Scam Adviser identified that the website could be a scam.
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HC seeks mechanism on disclosure of complaints against judges after SC says no data maintained
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court sought suggestions for a framework to balance transparency and judicial independence on April 1, after the Supreme Court submitted that it does not maintain judge-specific data on complaints alleging corruption or misconduct.
The submission was made by Advocate Rukhmini Bobde. He appeared for the Supreme Court’s Central Public Information Officer, before Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav in a petition filed by journalist and RTI activist Saurav Das. The case concerns an RTI application filed by Das in April 2023 seeking information on whether any complaints had been received against Justice T. Raja, former Acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, and if so, the number of such complaints and action taken.
According to a detailed report published by The Wire, the CPIO declined the request and stated that the information was “not maintained in the manner as sought for.” The first appellate authority upheld the decision. Although the Central Information Commission remanded the matter, the CPIO reaffirmed the refusal on similar grounds, which led Das to move the high court through Advocate Prashant Bhushan.
At the hearing, Justice Kaurav observed that the issue had wider institutional implications. It directed both sides to propose a mechanism that would protect the reputation of judges while ensuring public access to information regarding the handling of complaints. The case, Saurav Das v. CPIO, Supreme Court of India has been listed for further hearing on May 7.
During the arguments, Bhushan cited numbers released by the Union Law Ministry in Parliament in February 2026, which said that 8,630 complaints had been filed against sitting judges between 2016 and 2025. The Supreme Court provided data showing that complaints increased from 729 in 2016 to 1,102 in 2025. Bhushan questioned how aggregate data could be calculated without identifying the judges against whom complaints were filed.
Bobde responded that the data shared with Parliament reflected only total complaints against all sitting judges and did not involve judge-wise categorisation. She referred to the RTI request as a "fishing and roving inquiry." She also claimed that the Registry could not be forced to spend resources to collect material that was not stored in the format sought. She referenced the 2019 Constitution Bench decision in Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, which allows for rejection if compliance will disproportionately divert resources, as her justification.
The high court questioned how no judge-specific information was maintained and expressed concern that disclosure of large aggregate figures without clarity on how complaints were handled could affect public perception. Justice Kaurav noted that an applicant could not be denied information solely on technical grounds relating to format.
Bhushan argued that the RTI request did not seek details of complaint contents or collegium deliberations but merely whether complaints were received and what action followed, submitting that transparency in the handling of complaints was essential to maintain public confidence.
The Supreme Court’s in-house procedure for examining complaints, adopted in 1999, provides for scrutiny by the Chief Justice of India and, where warranted, inquiry by a committee of judges. There is no statutory requirement for public reporting of outcomes.
