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.........

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