Who’s Running BJP’s IT Cell Now? Their Old Tweets Have Answers

BJP just handed its digital operations to five new faces — and their X archives are already talking. From a debunked “spitting jihad” claim to misogynistic slurs and anti-Muslim rhetoric, we dig into the online history of the leaders now steering the party’s national social media machine. 

On August 17, the BJP replaced Amit Malviya as the head of its IT and social media operation with Deepak Mhaskey, a Chhattisgarh-based academic and political strategist. The change came as part of BJP president Nitin Nabin’s reshuffle of the party’s national team. He was appointed as the person-in-charge of BJP’s  National IT & Social Media department, with the four leaders serving as social media co-convenors, namely Priti Gandhi, Shivanand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav, assisting him in the new role.

Following the recent revamp of the BJP IT cell, several news media outlets called out past questionable posts by these individuals on X. This prompted the BJP IT cell’s newly appointed members to lock, delete, or resort to timeline cleansing on their X accounts.

But the archives remain.

The archive revealed that, in the past, these individuals were involved in sharing false or misleading, inflammatory, and communal rhetoric, as well as in hashtag campaigns.

In this report, we examine these X accounts closely.

Who comprises the BJP’s new  IT Cell?

Deepak Mhaskey has replaced Amit Malviya as the BJP’s national social media convenor. Based in Chhattisgarh, Deepak Mhaskey has previously worked with the state’s BJP unit. He has also served as the head of the BJP Chhattisgarh IT Cell and as a state spokesperson.

BJP has also appointed four social media co-convenors. The appointments were announced on August 17 as part of BJP president Nitin Nabin’s reshuffle of the party’s national office-bearers.

The four co-convenors

Priti Gandhi

Priti Gandhi, from Maharashtra, has been appointed as one of the four social media co-convenors. She has been active in BJP’s digital and political communication and has maintained a prominent presence on X under the handle @MrsGandhi. The account has been down since recent media reports flagged her inappropriate posts.

Shivanand Dwivedi

Shivanand Dwivedi is a writer and political commentator who has been associated with the BJP’s research and ideological ecosystem. He was part of the research team of the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Research Foundation, where his right-leaning writings appeared in The Nationalist, a publication associated with the foundation.

He has also authored books such as ‘Amrutkaal Ki Ore’ and ‘Amit Shah and the March of BJP’, both of which focus on the BJP’s rule in India since 2014.

Alok Bhatt

Alok Bhatt, from Uttarakhand, has also been appointed as a social media co-convenor. He has been active on X for several years, commenting extensively on political and social issues. He is also associated with The Pamphlet, a right-wing digital platform. Bhatt has publicly identified himself with the platform and has promoted its content on X.

Alok Bhatt has also contributed articles to OpIndia, a right-wing online news and opinion platform.

His X account, @alok_bhatt, is presently down after media reports highlighted communal and misogynistic posts he made in the past.

Arun Yadav

Arun Yadav, from Haryana, completes the new team of social media co-convenors. He has previously headed the BJP’s IT Cell in Haryana. In 2022, the BJP removed him from that position after his controversial post concerning Islam resurfaced. He has now returned to the party’s national digital structure as a social media co-convenor.

Deepak Mhaskey, along with these four co-convenors, now forms the BJP’s new national digital leadership.

Hate, false claims and hashtags

The new BJP social-media team does not begin with a blank digital record. An examination of social media archives of the members of the refurbished BJP IT cell reveals a history that ranges from fact-checked misinformation to communal and misogynistic rhetoric.

False and misleading claims

In November 2021, adding to the controversial ‘Thook Jihad claims that alleged that Muslim spitted in food as part of the Halal culture, Priti Gandhi shared a video asking whether a Muslim cleric was spitting on food being prepared for a gathering. Alt News found that the man was blowing on the food after reciting Quranic verses, a ritual followed by some Sufi Sunni Muslims.

Similarly, in July 2025, Priti Gandhi shared a video accompanied by a communal claim that the two women accused of cheating during a Chhattisgarh PWD examination were Muslims who had been allowed to wear burqas inside the examination hall.

The Quint found the claim to be false. The accused were identified as two Hindu sisters, Anu Suriya and Anuradha, and local police confirmed that the incident had no religious angle.

On August 17, Gurpreet Singh Sangha, a leader of the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM), shared a post on X that shows screenshots of several old posts attributed to Alok Bhatt’s X account, @alok_bhatt. One post, dated February 10, 2012, uses misogynistic and sexually derogatory language against former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Another post from March 21, 2012, similarly uses abusive sexual language against a woman, while a May 2013 reply contains another derogatory reference to a woman. The screenshots also show a 2012 post in which Bhatt described reservation as the ‘2nd biggest cancer afflicting India after Jihadism’, and a 2017 reply containing a derogatory reference to circumcision.

In an article published by OpIndia on April 8, 2022, Alok Bhatt criticised The Wire’s founding editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, for his reporting and political views. The article used repeated personal attacks and derogatory references, while accusing him of manufacturing stories and pursuing ‘propaganda against the Narendra Modi government’ in the name of journalism.

In May 2021, Arun Yadav amplified a claim that the AAP government had provided ₹1 crore in COVID-19 compensation only to the family of a Muslim doctor.

Alt News found that the compensation was part of a broader Delhi government policy covering government and private-sector personnel deployed on COVID-19 duties, clarifying that the viral claim was misleading and falsely targeted the Muslim community.

In July 2022, Arun Yadav’s 2017 post that read, “मुझे तो पेग में पैगम्बर नज़र आता है”, which translates to ‘I see the Prophet in my peg,’  resurfaced on X.

Soon, the hashtag #ArrestArunYadav became a major trend on X. Following the online outrage, the Haryana BJP removed Yadav as the party’s IT Cell in-charge in 2022, only to be reinstated into BJP’s national IT cell in August 2026 as a co-convenor.

Our examination of available archival evidence did not uncover any verified false claims, hate speech or other problematic posts attributable to Shivanand Dwivedi. We found no sufficient evidence in the archived material to include him among the cases documented above.

Although no evidence could tie Deepak Mhaskey with sharing misinformation online, we found that his X history shows his involvement in political campaigns against the Congress, where he posted under hashtags such as #श्रीराम_विरोधी_कांग्रेस, #राष्ट्रविरोधी_है_कांग्रेस, #झूठी_कांग्रेस, #भ्रष्ट_कांग्रेस_सरकार and #डर_गई_कांग्रेसetw

Between 2019 and 2023, while he was associated with the BJP’s Chhattisgarh IT Cell, he also targeted the then Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on X, repeatedly using hashtags including  #अब_तो_जागो_भूपेश, #लबरा_के_डबरा, #KisanVirodhiBhupesh, #जवाब_दो_भूपेश, #भ्रष्ट_भूपेश_सरकार, #छत्तीसगढ़_में_जंगलराज, #नाकाम_भूपेश_सरकार and #छत्तीसगढ़_त्रस्त_भूपेश_मस्त.

His posts portrayed the Congress and Bhupesh Baghel government as anti-national, corrupt, anti-farmer and ineffective.

The activity indicates that Mhaskey was an active participant in the BJP’s digital campaign against the Congress and the previous government in Chhattisgarh before taking charge of the party’s national social-media operation.

The BJP’s new digital team does not come with a uniform digital record. While no problematic content was found in the available archives of Shivanand Dwivedi, the records of Priti Gandhi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav contain false or misleading communal claims and inflammatory remarks. Deepak Mhaskey’s history, meanwhile, reveals his consistent participation in hashtag campaigns against the Congress and the former Chhattisgarh government.

The reshuffle may be new, but the digital playbook looks familiar. Behind the fresh titles and official appointments lies a trail of retracted claims, communal dog-whistles and personal attacks — much of it still sitting in plain sight despite the timeline cleanups. As Deepak Mhaskey and his team take charge of shaping BJP’s online messaging heading into the next election cycle, their past posts offer a preview of the tone the party’s digital front may adopt.