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As the new team’s old posts, including communal propaganda, misinformation and anti-reservation rhetoric now lies behind deleted accounts, protected tweets or those simply deleted from their timeline, it has raised questions about whether the party’s new members with their old ways, will be able to address the BJP’s communication problems, along with the systemic issues laid bare by the protests.

The BJP’s rise to power in 2014 was on the wheels of an aggressive social media campaign. The medium has been routinely used by the BJP to spread hate propaganda, misinformation and control narratives. After the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, BJP emerged as the primary spender of Google Ads, spending Rs 116 crores within the initial five months of the election year. The failure to game social media now despite the use of vast resources, has led the party to remove Malviya, who had headed the party’s social media machinery since 2015. 

Meanwhile, old tweets of the new members raise the question whether with their old ways, they will be able to assert control, particularly over Instagram – a medium that the party is yet to crack. In short, what is going to change? 

Less than a month after the Narendra Modi government faced widespread youth protests, forcing the resignation of a Union minister for the first time under sustained public pressure, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has brought in a new social media team. The move is being pitched as the party’s new president Nitin Nabin simply rejigging the organisation under his command, though its timing is telling as it comes close after the BJP’s failure to counter the social media narrative, particularly on Instagram, that powered the protests.

In a bid for a new start, the party’s longtime social media head Amit Malviya, who had been at the helm since 2015 and was known for running an IT cell machinery of trolling, misinformation and intimidation by sheer volume, has been replaced with Deepak Mhaskey, former social media convenor for the BJP in Chhattisgarh. Alongside Mhaskey, Priti Gandhi, Shivanand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav have been made co-convenors.

Such is the attempt at a fresh start, that as the new social media team’s old tweets and posts have resurfaced showing their abusive communal propaganda, misinformation, and anti-reservation rhetoric, BJP leaders have either deleted their accounts, protected their tweets, or removed old posts entirely. Both Priti Gandhi and Alok Bhatt’s X accounts do not exist as of August 19 evening, and Arun Yadav’s tweets remain protected. 

Mhaskey himself also scrubbed his X page clean and the first tweet on his profile now dates to August 17, when he was given the charge of the party’s social media team. Only Shivanand Dwivedi’s profile appears to include posts prior to August 17 and remains open to public.

This has raised the questions of how effective the BJP’s recalibration through its new team will be, with faces having changed but not the politics, as the saffron party attempts to woo the youth ahead of key assembly elections, including in Uttar Pradesh next year, as well as the Lok Sabha in 2029.

Posts deleted and cleaned

While Priti Gandhi’s account presently does not exist, she has, in the past, been called out for spreading misinformation. 

In 2014, WikiLeaks identified Gandhi – then co-convener of Maharashtra BJP Communication Cell – as the one pushing “fake endorsement” that its founder Julian Assange had called Modi “incorruptible”, a claim that was subsequently amplified by the BJP’s online supporters as a high-profile acknowledgement of the party’s then prime ministerial candidate.

AltNews has reported that not only has she been fact checked by them multiple times, but her older posts show repeated support for Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse.........

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