Published Aug 18, 2026 | 11:41 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 18, 2026 | 11:41 AM
Deepak Mhaskey is a long-time member of the BJP, who has worked extensively on social media and election strategising in Chhattisgarh.
Synopsis: The BJP has replaced Amit Malviya with Deepak Mhaskey as its IT chief amid efforts to improve its outreach to Gen Z. However, the new social media team has faced scrutiny over allegedly deleted or hidden posts containing sexist, casteist, Islamophobic and communal remarks, potentially undermining the party’s youth outreach strategy.
Rolling with the punches dealt by the Cockroach Janta Party protests and the subsequent aversion to the saffron fold among the Gen Z, the BJP has attempted a major rejig of its social media team. Amit Malviya, the face of BJP’s propaganda machinery for the last decade, who significantly contributed to the party’s growth through his fierce social media campaigns, often based entirely on misinformation and hate speech, has been replaced by a relatively unknown party leader in a surprise announcement on August 17. Deepak Mhaskey, a long-time member of the BJP, who has worked extensively on social media and election strategising in Chhattisgarh, has been chosen by the party to replace Malviya.
Mhaskey’s team consists of four co-convenors: Priti Gandhi, Shivanand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav, hailing from Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Haryana respectively.
These BJP leaders have had a very problematic social media presence, with overwhelming number of their posts reeking of blatantly sexist, abuse, casteist, Islamophobic and communal remarks. However, interestingly, none of these posts is available right now. Seemingly, before the announcement of the new IT cell team, the BJP’s newly minted office bearers have erased their entire online existence, apparently to hide the extremely problematic posts that had appeared on their handles.
Mhaskey’s account has erased or archived all the posts before the August 17 announcement, while Gandhi and Bhatt’s pages are no longer visible. Dwivedi and Yadav’s accounts have been made private. However, a digital footprint isn’t too easy to erase. Much to the party’s agony, journalists and activists have started digging up earlier posts by its new IT warriors, and they don’t make for an appealing picture, not to Gen Z, nor to anyone with even a modicum of political wisdom.
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Some of the previous posts of Alok Bhatt and Priti Gandhi, according to the screenshots being shared on social media, are extremely problematic and far from just misinformation.
In a post shared on X, senior lawyer Vrinda Grover flagged a purported tweet by Bhatt from 2012, in which he used extremely misogynistic language to describe a woman politician.
These tweets are of the newly anointed BJP IT Cell Co Coordinator, Alok Bhatt. (Btw A.Bhatt has deactivated his X account) However the incriminating evidence has been preserved.
Is anyone offended by these words and thoughts?? Is this Abhadra language?
So Modi, RSS and all… https://t.co/CoM9UtrCRq pic.twitter.com/eOCDHNXVhw— Vrinda Grover (@vrindagrover) August 17, 2026
Journalist and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair shared another purported tweet by Bhatt from 2016, where he describes voting rights as the “root cause” of “all our problems.”
“If you analyse -root cause of all our problems is- that bloody voting right. Muslim vote bank and reservation problems stem from that!” reads the tweet.
Zubair also pointed out that Bhatt is the founder of a right-wing propaganda unit, ‘The Pamphlet.’
Did you know, Alok Bhatt, The New appointee as Co-convener of BJP’s Social Media Department is also the man behind the propaganda outlet @Pamphlet_in? pic.twitter.com/wxN08G2N4G
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) August 17, 2026
Screenshots shared by other users also show Bhatt making misogynistic, casteist and Islamophobic remarks.
“Reservation is the second biggest cancer afflicting India after Jihadism. Everything else flows from that,” reads one of his earlier tweets.
He is New Co Coordinator of BJP IT cell Alok Bhatt . Look at his tweets . He has deactivated his twitter account now . pic.twitter.com/5XopdZGPtv
— Surbhi (@SurrbhiM) August 17, 2026
Meanwhile, Priti Gandhi’s earlier tweets, dug up by social media, show her repeatedly declaring her loyalty to Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.
In one of her purported tweets, she even says that she is “ashamed” of her second name and that it should have been Godse instead of Gandhi. In another tweet, she calls Godse a “great freedom fighter.”
Priti Gandhi BJP’s New co-convener of Social Media Department.
She is a proud Godse fan . pic.twitter.com/5Ec2LnpSmQ
— Surbhi (@SurrbhiM) August 17, 2026
Another co-convenor, Arun Yadav, was sacked by the BJP after political backlash for making controversial remarks during his stint as the party’s Haryana IT cell chief.
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After his name was announced as the BJP’s IT chief, Mhaskey responded to a media question on how they are planning to reach out to the youth by stating that it would be through “reels” (as advised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi).
The surprise rejig has come at a time when the BJP has discovered a new problem: the Gen Z and their absolute contempt and aversion for saffron politics.
PM Modi and his team have realised that social media and some compliance with their language is the only way to Gen Z hearts, which has been demonstrated in the prime minister’s online presence since the CJP protests. Malviya, who is used to aggressively defending the party and delegitimising the opponents, was not helping much in the new Gen Z outreach strategy, according to political observers. Even if he wished to help, his problematic history of being allegedly the most fact-checked political leader in the country wouldn’t look presentable to the young generation, which has already lost respect for the BJP.
Mhaskey, who has significant experience in handling social media but a relatively unknown profile, is thus the BJP’s choice for damage control. However, the IT team members’ online past looks like something that would haunt the party and challenge its attempts to reach out to the youth.
Like Vrinda Grover pointed out, the youth has seen how “Bhatt has been rewarded by the PM and BJP for such vile innuendoes.”
“So Modi, RSS and all Uncles, please spare your pious lectures to young women and Betis, on what to say and how to say.
The youth are speaking to you in your favoured language,” she wrote.
