The company tweeted “Captain is ready to take you home” with two sneaky-eye emoticons to go alongside, leading to a range of reactions from its followers.

The tweet referred to PTI’s win in the Supreme Court and the removal of Hamza Shehbaz as the chief minister of Punjab.

Some people urged their followers to download inDriver instead of Careem.

Others accused Careem of being a “political wing of a fascist party”.

Some criticised the company for adopting a political view and being unprofessional.

Due to these tweets, among hundreds of others, #BoycottCareem has been trending on Twitter. However, a large number of PTI supporters reacted differently, giving the application five-star reviews and posting screenshots of installing the app.

Careem has previously received backlash for carrying “political campaigns” as well.

In 2018, the company released a number of ads, which played with political slogans. For example, one advertisement read “Kal bhi promo zinda tha, aaj bhi promo zinda hai!” while another was a variation of Imran Khan’s famous dialogue, saying “Gaari aa nahi rahe, Gaari agayi hai”.

At that time, a number of people also popped up on social media to chastise the company for creating politically-biased advertisements. The company soon apologised, claiming that it only intended to increase voter turnout.

Background

On July 22, Hamza Shehbaz won the Punjab chief minister seat, after the deputy speaker refused to count PML-Q’s 10 seats. PTI challenged the speaker’s ruling in court.

The Supreme Court ruled in PTI’s favour on Tuesday (yesterday), according to which Pervez Elahi would now occupy the Punjab chief minister seat.