1. Event Overview
Operation Zero Bribe (OZB), a citizen-led anti-corruption awareness campaign founded by Harshit Hemnani and operating in cooperation with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Gujarat, held the grand launch of its second season, “Operation Zero Bribe 2.0,” on July 12, 2026, at Café Sky Lounge in the Vesu area of Surat.
The event brought together more than 50 nominated social media influencers from across the city alongside officials from the Anti-Corruption Bureau. The gathering marked the formal transition of OZB from a locally rooted awareness initiative into a campaign positioning itself for national and international expansion.
2. Proceedings
● Attendance: 50+ city-nominated social media influencers; officials from the AntiCorruption Bureau, Gujarat.
● Speakers addressed multiple themes related to corruption awareness and civic participation, followed by open discussion on how the campaign’s first season could be built upon.
● Founder Harshit Hemnani outlined the campaign’s forward-looking goals for OZB 2.0, framing the initiative’s trajectory as moving from a local and city-level effort toward a global platform.
3. Stated Strategic Direction
According to statements made at the launch and reported in local press, OZB’s next phase includes the following elements:
● Appointment of country-level representatives (‘country ambassadors’) to extend the campaign’s presence into multiple nations.
● Ongoing dialogue with international bodies, specifically referenced as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the BRICS Youth Alliance, to bring the campaign onto an international platform.
● A stated policy posture of constructive engagement with government — explicitly not adversarial opposition — aimed at encouraging positive, citizen-driven reform through active civic participation.
4. Media Coverage
The launch received coverage across at least three regional publications spanning both Gujarati and Hindi press:
● Nav Gujarat Times — “Operation Zero Bribe’s Season 2 Grand Launch” (Gujarati)
● Supremo Gujarat — coverage of the Vesu launch event (Gujarati)
● Loktej — “Operation Zero Bribe 2.0 Launched in Surat, New Direction to Corruption-Free Campaign” (Hindi) This spread across multiple regional outlets and language markets indicates the event achieved genuine local press pickup rather than being confined to a single publication or a purely social-media announcement.
5. Reach and Engagement
In the period surrounding the Season 2 launch (8–15 July 2026), OZB’s Instagram channel recorded the following, drawn from platform analytics:
● Views: 54,601
● Net new followers: +48
● Interactions: approximately 1,240
● Viewer composition: 15.6% followers, 84.4% non-followers
● Viewers reached: 17,764
● Views by content type: Stories 29,000
● Interactions by content type: Posts 905, Stories 228, Reels 110, Live videos 0
● Profile visits: 906
● Top-performing content included the launch-event graphic, a repost of newspaper coverage, and a reel titled ‘Operation Zero Bribe 2.0’ with 4,200 views
