As Chennai struggled with its floods on Friday, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's photos began to appear on many of the relief packages being distributed to citizens.

By Friday evening, the chief minister and her party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, became the target of public ire as images of flood relief workers pasting the photos on food packets began to do the rounds.

 

The response from Twitter users, as expected, was vicious.

 

 

 

By Saturday, however, other Jayalalithaa supporters attempted to control the damage by posting clarifications that the stickers were not part of any official campaign, but the work of "goons".


A helpline was started to report cases of AIADMK workers forcing anyone to paste Jayalalithaa stickers on relief packages.


Not everyone, however, could reach the helpline numbers given being shared online:

The official AIADMK Twitter handle, meanwhile, has not posted any clarification about who is behind the forcible sticker-pasting. Instead, the party has been aggressively promoting the #Amma hashtag, a reference to Jayalalithaa's most popular nickname, while tweeting about ongoing relief work: