The BJP replaced Amit Malviya as its IT Cell and social media chief on August 17, 2026, ending an 11-year run, and named Chhattisgarh leader Deepak Mhaskey as his successor.
Malviya, a former banker, joined the BJP's digital operation in 2009 and was made IT Cell head in 2015, becoming the face of its online campaigns.
He also served as the BJP's West Bengal co-in-charge, a role he retains, having helped steer the party to its first-ever Bengal government in the 2026 Assembly polls.
For 11 years, Amit Malviya was the BJP's loudest voice online — the man behind the party's rapid-response social media machine, and by extension one of the most argued-about figures in Indian political communication. On August 17, 2026, that run ended: the BJP announced a major organisational reshuffle, handing charge of its national IT cell and social media department to Chhattisgarh leader Deepak Mhaskey, days after the party's landmark victory in the West Bengal Assembly election.
Malviya's exit from the post closes a chapter that reshaped how Indian political parties fight elections online, and one that was as marked by legal battles and controversy as it was by results.
Who is Amit Malviya?
Malviya hails from Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, and holds a Bachelor of Business Management from the Dayalbagh Educational Institute and a PGDM in Finance and Systems from the Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies. Before entering full-time politics, he built a career in banking, working with ICICI Bank, HSBC and Bank of America. He entered the BJP's orbit in 2009 through the online forum "Friends of BJP," and was appointed head of the party's Information Technology Cell in 2015.
How did he build the BJP's digital machine?
Over the following decade, Malviya turned the IT Cell into a central instrument of the BJP's campaign strategy — coordinating rapid rebuttals, viral content and narrative-building across national and state elections. A Newslaundry profile marking his exit described him as the party's loudest voice online and, "by some distance, its most fact-checked" — a description that captures both the scale of his output and the scrutiny it repeatedly attracted from independent fact-checkers and rival political camps.
Malviya's most significant assignment outside the IT Cell was West Bengal, where he was named co-in-charge alongside Arvind Menon on November 13, 2020, under state in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya. The BJP's Bengal tally rose from just three seats in the 2016 Assembly election to 77 in 2021. That build-up culminated in the 2026 Assembly election, when the BJP defeated Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress outright, winning 208 of 294 seats and ending the TMC's 15-year hold on the state. Malviya remains the party's West Bengal co-in-charge even after stepping down from the IT Cell.
The Tek Fog controversy
Malviya's tenure was also defined by one of Indian journalism's most consequential retractions. In January 2022, the news outlet The Wire published a series alleging that the BJP IT Cell used an app called "Tek Fog" to manipulate social media trends, hijack dormant accounts and spread propaganda, and separately claimed Malviya held special privileges under Meta's XCheck programme that let him get posts removed "on command." The story went viral and drew international coverage.
By October 2022, The Wire had retracted the reports, saying it had been deceived by a source who fabricated internal Meta documents, and issued an apology. Malviya subsequently filed a complaint leading to a Delhi Police FIR against Wire editors Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, M.K. Venu and Jahnavi Sen for cheating, forgery, defamation and criminal conspiracy, according to Newslaundry and Scroll.
The Editors Guild of India and Bloomberg also withdrew their earlier references to the Tek Fog reporting.
Why has he now been replaced?
The change came as part of a broader organisational reshuffle announced by new BJP national president Nitin Nabin, which also saw six minority-community leaders, including Muslim, Christian and Sikh faces, given key party posts. Deepak Mhaskey was named convenor of the BJP's Social Media Department, with Priti Gandhi, Shivanand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav appointed as co-convenors. Malviya, who does not otherwise feature in Nabin's new team, publicly congratulated Mhaskey and the other new office-bearers on X, calling the appointments timely as the party looks to "scale newer heights."
Mhaskey is a comparatively low-profile BJP organiser from Chhattisgarh who had been part of the party's social media team before taking over the top role. Before entering electoral data and communication work, he taught chemistry and worked across agriculture and horticulture, and has also served on the board of a public-sector undertaking and held a senior post in the Chhattisgarh state administration, per Newslaundry's reporting on the transition.
What does this mean for Malviya's future?
Malviya's removal from the IT Cell does not appear to signal a broader exit from BJP politics — he continues as the party's West Bengal co-in-charge, a state the BJP has just won for the first time. Commentary following the reshuffle has read the timing as significant rather than diminishing: Tax Compass CEO Ajay Rotti, a past critic of Malviya, said on X that it would be premature to treat the change as the end of his political relevance, suggesting the scale of the Bengal victory could open the door to a bigger role rather than close one.
For now, the reshuffle marks the formal end of an 11-year run in which Malviya built the BJP's digital operation into one of the most closely watched — and most contested — forces in Indian political communication.
