BJP promises ‘positive content’. Its new social media team’s record tells another story

Days after taking charge as the BJP’s national social media convenor, Deepak Mhaske told a gathering of reporters, “My focus will be to tackle the fake narrative spread by the Opposition, which uses AI in reels to twist facts and mislead people. We have been creating positive content and taking it to people. I will try to add momentum to this.”

The 58-year-old chemistry professor-turned-politician has spent over a decade in the party’s IT cell. While he accused the Opposition of peddling “fake narratives” and promised to fight them with “positive content”, his own state unit’s Instagram account was busy dividing Gen Z into communal categories.  

Three weeks before his appointment, the BJP’s Chhattisgarh unit posted a reel juxtaposing an Instagram creator’s video from a Mumbai protest against NEET-UG paper leaks with footage of a student receiving an award from President Droupadi Murmu. It described the creator as “Babar ki virasat par thumke lagane waale Gen-Z” and the student as “Chhattisgarh ke maan badhane wale Gen-Z”. The post is perhaps a telling example of what one can expect from the BJP IT cell in the coming days.

Mhaske’s appointment was part of a larger reshuffle of central party office-bearers, constituted by BJP national president Nitin Nabin. One of the biggest changes was the leadership’s decision to drop Amit Malviya as national social media convenor and replace him with Mhaske. The reshuffle also brought some familiar online faces, including Priti Gandhi, Alok Bhatt, and Arun Yadav, along with a relatively newer face, Shivanand Dwivedi, as national social media co-conveners.   

BJP ‘war room’ veteran, Nabin aide

Mhaske’s contributions to the party date back to at least 2009, when he joined the party as state convenor of the IT cell in Chhattisgarh, a role he held until 2018, according to Sunil Pillai, Chhattisgarh BJP’s IT cell state convenor, and a close associate. 

As convenor of the state IT cell, Mhaske played a key role in the 2013 Assembly election. A 2013 report in The Indian Express said the BJP focussed on Facebook and WhatsApp in urban areas and had brought in technocrats to develop its online campaign. In areas with poor internet connectivity, he told the publication that they would also use voice calls to reach voters. 

By March 2014, he was involved in running a high-tech call centre to coordinate party workers across Chhattisgarh. He said the BJP was using the system to exchange information with workers and was extensively using social media to reach voters.

Ahead of the 2018 Assembly election, Mhaske continued to expand the BJP’s grassroots social-media network. The New Indian Express in 2018 reported that the BJP IT cell was recruiting and training supporters as “social media volunteers” and organising them through region-wise WhatsApp groups. Mhaske said volunteers would be allowed to create and present their own messages as long as they remained aligned with the party’s “thoughts and ambitions”. He also became a BJP spokesperson in 2018 and took on responsibilities related to media coordination. 

Pillai told Newslaundry that Mhaske had built a team of people who had worked with him from the beginning and brought several election-related functions in-house that were usually outsourced. “From booth management to the top, he’s been a great manager,” he said, describing him as a meticulous manager and efficient planner. Pillai also said Mhaske had worked under the guidance of BJP president Nabin during several state election campaigns. 

Mhaske’s work in Chhattisgarh has combined building a digital infrastructure with political messaging and election management. Pillai said what began with constituency-level Facebook pages, WhatsApp networks and campaign call centres evolved into a more organised network of party-aligned volunteers, and later electoral-data analysis and political communication. Besides Chhattisgarh, he was the social media in-charge of the party’s election campaigns in Goa (2022), Uttar Pradesh (2022) and Bihar (2025).  

Pillai also said Mhaske, whose family has deep ties to the RSS, opposed what he considered false or misleading narratives and would emphasise the BJP’s own record. “He is against fake narratives. He always says: ‘Show the good work we have done’,” said Pillai. 

Fake narratives may be Mhaske’s stated enemy, but old posts on his own account, it turns out, are not safe either. Alt News found that @deepakmhaskey shed 1,342 posts in under 24 hours after his appointment — from 6,905 posts at 5:19 pm on August 17 to 5,563 by the next day.

From Modi supporter to BJP’s national social-media team

Priti Gandhi goes by @MrsGandhi on X. A member of the BJP’s IT cell in Maharashtra since 2013, she was appointed the party’s Mahila Morcha national social media convenor in 2018, a position she held till her recent appointment. However, since her appointment as the party’s national social media co-convenor, her X account has remained deleted as of August 21.  

Newslaundry has reached out to Gandhi for comment about her deleted X account, and will update the copy if and when she responds. 

She emerged as a prominent supporter of Narendra Modi on social media in 2013 and was subsequently brought into the BJP’s communication structure in Maharashtra. A report by the Economic Times noted that Gandhi was a “homemaker” who had built a large following through her aggressive support for Modi and the BJP, and that the party’s communication cell had reached out to her and enlisted her as a volunteer.

Gandhi’s social-media record has repeatedly attracted scrutiny. One of the earliest documented examples is a screenshot of a tweet dated October 21, 2012, in which she wrote: “I said the Gandhi last name is like a gaali. I would have rather been a Modi or Godse!!” A screenshot from the same account dated eight days earlier also shows her describing herself as a “huge huge huge Nathuram Godse fan”. 

These screenshots have gone viral since her appointment. This is ironic timing for someone whose own X account chose this exact moment to vanish. 

A 2021 paper by Eviane Leidig, director of research and outreach at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), highlighted that in 2020, Gandhi was among BJP figures who pushed “love jihad” narratives around the death of Nikita Tomar – a student who was shot outside her college in Ballabhgarh by a Muslim youth. According to a 2020 report by Lokmat, Gandhi posted this tweet on her page on 27 October 2020. 

The Times of India reported that the police chargesheet in the case noted no sections of the IPC related to forced conversions and other associated crimes. 

There are also several instances where the material Gandhi shared was subsequently found to be false or misleading. In March 2014, she circulated a purported WikiLeaks/Julian Assange endorsement of Narendra Modi that claimed Modi was “incorruptible”. WikiLeaks subsequently denied that Assange had endorsed Modi and clarified that the wording came from a 2006 US diplomatic cable describing how an interlocutor viewed Modi. 

In November 2021, she shared a video asking whether a Muslim cleric was “spitting” into food. Alt News traced the video to a Muslim community langar in Kerala and established that the man was blowing on the food after reciting Quranic verses, a ritual intended to invoke blessings.

During the 2021 West Bengal post-poll violence, Newslaundry reported that Gandhi shared a doctored video showing men wielding swords while dancing to the TMC’s election song “Khela Hobe”. Uploaded to YouTube in 2020, the original video had different music. Gandhi did not take down her post even after the video was identified as doctored. 

Her online activity has continued to mix BJP politics with religiously charged commentary. According to The Hindu, in a November 2025 post, Gandhi criticised Indian cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues for what she saw as an attempt to bring religion into a discussion about representing India. In the post, she remarked that Rodrigues, in wearing the India jersey, represented Indians, “not your church”.  

Sacked in 2022, back in 2026

Arun Yadav worked as a consultant with multinational and private consulting firms before joining the BJP as the head of its Haryana IT cell in October 2018. 

He told the Indian Express that the growing importance of digital campaigning after 2014, combined with his own inclination towards politics, prompted him to leave consulting and join the party. One of his first assignments was the 2019 Jind Assembly by-election, where BJP candidate Krishan Middha won. Yadav said that subsequently his team coordinated digital campaigns in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and other elections. 

A 2022 Indian Express report said his job was to keep followers engaged with the BJP’s agenda and mobilise them against political opponents. His work also involved building an extensive digital network in Haryana. His political messaging, however, frequently went beyond conventional party communication. He filed police complaints against filmmaker Leena Manimekalai over allegations of insulting the Hindu goddess Kali and against comedian Munawar Faruqui over alleged insults to Hindu deities. 

Yadav’s tenure as Haryana IT cell chief ended in July 2022, after an old social-media post from July 2017 triggered a campaign demanding his arrest. He claimed that his post was in response to remarks by a former Samajwadi Party MP that allegedly linked Hindu gods with alcohol. The purported post read, “I see the Prophet in the Peg.” 

His social-media record has also been repeatedly flagged for misleading content. The Quint reported that several posts on his pages were misleading. These included a video suggesting Shah Rukh Khan had spat on Lata Mangeshkar's mortal remains after offering a dua, a clipped video of Congress leader Rashid Alvi that removed its original context, and an image falsely suggesting Rahul Gandhi had eaten while wearing a mask.  

In April 2023, Newslaundry documented that Yadav posted photographs showing an Islamic shrine in Bhiwani and a Hanuman idol at the same location, presenting the incident as though it had happened just days earlier. The photographs were from April 2022, when Bajrang Dal workers had demolished a mazar and installed a Hanuman idol there. After speaking with Newslaundry, Yadav initially said he had received the information from a local group and had posted it merely “as information”. He deleted the post shortly after. 

The episode is particularly relevant to Yadav’s new role because he was removed from an IT cell leadership position following controversy over social-media posts, while multiple fact-checkers have documented misleading material he shared. 

Newslaundry reached out to him for comment, and we will update the copy if and when he responds. 

A history of anti-reservation, anti-Muslim tweets 

Within days of Alok Bhatt’s appointment, old posts on religion, reservation, and historical figures resurfaced, and the account itself disappeared. The disappearance of his X account as of August 21 has led to screenshots of several old posts going viral on social media.

Bhatt is from Uttarakhand and has been active as a political commentator and writer. His social-media record has included garden-variety anti-reservation and anti-Muslim rhetoric as well as misogynistic language. Prior to his recent appointment, he did not appear to have held any official post in the BJP.  However, in his congratulatory post on X, outgoing IT cell chief Amit Malviya expressed his appreciation for the new appointees and noted that he “had the privilege of working closely with each of them over the last decade.”

A 2012 post in which Bhatt used derogatory and misogynistic language while referring to a woman politician is being shared on social media, questioning his appointment. Another purported 2016 post in which he wrote that “voting right” was the “root cause” of problems, including the “Muslim vote bank and reservation”. Another screenshot circulated with the statement that “Reservation is the second biggest cancer afflicting India after Jihadism.” 

Another set of his old posts being circulated includes comments about Prithviraj Chauhan and other Rajput historical figures. The post triggered an angry reaction from Rajput community-centred social-media accounts. 

Newslaundry reached out to Bhatt for comment, but he refused to speak to us. 

BJP researcher and author, and now ‘reaching’ Gen Z

Shivanand Dwivedi, a native of Deoria in Uttar Pradesh, joins the BJP’s national social-media team from a background in political research, writing, and party work. 

The Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Research Foundation’s 2021 profile describes him as a postgraduate in political science, the editor of the web portal Nationalist Online and a columnist for Hindi newspapers, magazines and online portals. It also identifies his research interests as Indian media trends, contemporary politics and the free market. 

His association with the foundation goes back several years. Its 2017 annual report identifies Dwivedi as a research fellow and records him as the co-editor of Parivartan Ki Ore, a book on the Narendra Modi government’s initiatives and schemes that was released by then BJP president Amit Shah in Gorakhpur. Dwivedi has described his association with the BJP as considerably longer than his formal organisational role. 

Speaking to Newslaundry after his appointment, he said he had been connected with the BJP since childhood and had been formally associated with the party for about 12 years. He said he had worked as a party worker and campaigned in several states, including West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP subsequently won elections. 

He also said he had co-edited three books as a senior political researcher with the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Foundation and written a biography of Amit Shah. Dwivedi told Newslaundry that his objective under Mhaske would be to do “good work” and connect with Gen Z. He also pushed back against reports that his social-media accounts had been made private, saying that he had never been particularly active on it.

Alt News reported that Dwivedi's X account, @shiwadwivedi, became accessible again after his appointment, but its post count had fallen from about 10,800 to 10,200. That represents a reduction of roughly 600 posts. When asked about this, he denied any allegations of deleting posts on his social media accounts. 

The decline does not, by itself, establish what was deleted, when or why, but for a team assembled to fight “fake narratives”, the overhaul is built upon familiar digital actors carrying newly elevated titles.

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