Until this week, Deepak Mhaskey was known mainly within the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Chhattisgarh unit, where he built the state’s district-level social media network and analysed election data for the party. He has now been named head of the BJP’s national IT cell, taking over from Amit Malviya, who ran the party’s digital operations for more than 10 years.
Before entering politics full time, Mhaskey taught chemistry at a college for a few years, according to a profile carried in an annual report of Engineers India Ltd, a public-sector undertaking on whose board he has served. The same profile describes him as an experienced agriculturist, with close to four decades of work in horticulture and organic farming, and says he has also held a senior post in the Chhattisgarh state administration and worked briefly on road construction.
The report also credits him with analysing nationwide electoral data and government beneficiary schemes, saying his findings have been used by private and government agencies, though it does not give further detail. His posts on X over the years point to some of this work: in July 2024, he wrote about presenting an election analysis to the BJP’s state working committee in Chhattisgarh, and a year earlier, about a presentation to newly elected representatives following the state’s urban body and panchayat polls.
Mhaskey’s role in the party’s social media operations goes back further. In a 2013 interview, described in local reports at the time as part of an “aggressive campaign war” the party was preparing for state elections, he was quoted, then as head of the BJP’s Chhattisgarh IT cell, describing plans for a network of about 90 constituency-level Facebook pages to be run by roughly 25 to 26 dedicated IT teams across the state.
In recent years, Mhaskey has also been an active and combative voice on X, where he has frequently criticised the Congress party and its leadership in Chhattisgarh, as well as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. In one post in July 2024, he questioned Gandhi’s remarks on Hindus and Hindutva, writing that they came from someone whose “family’s religion is not known till date.” Other posts targeted the then Congress government in Chhattisgarh with videos and graphics shared from the state BJP’s account.
The annual report also lists Mhaskey’s involvement in state welfare initiatives in Chhattisgarh, including the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign, health camps, rural library development and digital-payment awareness drives.
Malviya, who built a reputation as the party’s most visible and most fact-checked voice online during his decade in charge, remains co-in-charge of the BJP’s operations in West Bengal, a state the party won in the recent assembly election.