In a reel posted by Paltu Paltan, an Instagram account mocking Opposition parties with 1.64 lakh followers, two Muslim men tell a Hindu man that if Congress comes to power, they will get half his property. Paltu Paltan, created in June 2022, only follows right-wing and official Bharatiya Janata Party accounts and has over 3,000 posts, its reel garnering around 10,000 likes apiece. One of the actors playing a Muslim man in the video is 15-year-old Ashish Pandey from Bihar.
Pandey, who just appeared for his 10th standard exams, is part of a group called MVS Films, run by him, Jitendra Mishra and Vivek Tiwari. The cousin trio from Buxar, Bihar, has a penchant for acting and started their YouTube channel in 2018 with small skits highlighting social issues. MVS Films has about 46 thousand followers on Instagram. On YouTube, it has nearly 4 lakh subscribers.
Speaking to Decode, 28-year-old Tiwari said that it was in 2020 that they first hit virality, with a song addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the high unemployment in Bihar, asking “Modi chacha” to create jobs in the state. “Even Ravish Kumar mentioned our song in his video,” said Tiwari proudly.
Now, in 2024, MVS Films makes skits calling Congress a Muslim party and spreading false claims about the Congress manifesto. A recent reel on Paltu Paltan, featuring Tiwari and Mishra claims if Congress comes to power, all the assets of Hindus will be given to "peaceful minorities" a term used by the right-wing for Muslims.
“We only make content that we know is true and we see what is happening in the society. They don’t need to say it in the manifesto, we all know who they will support,” said Tiwari when asked about their video making a false claim..
Tiwari, however, denied being paid by any political party and maintained that they are "independent", explaining, "We have been approached by some parties, especially after we made videos about the Bihar and UP elections, but we have not agreed to tie up. We aim to spread messages that reflect the society and this may not sit well with some political parties."
Over the last few months, BJP proxy pages have been sharing reels made by young Hindi heartland influencers. Decode’s investigation found that these pages are all linked to and run by Varahe Analytics, a consultancy firm hired by the party at the Centre to make ads mocking the I.N.D.I.A bloc. One of Varahe Analytics’ ads was Dulha kaun, which made waves on social media. We counted at least 40 reels featuring the MVS Films trio shared by the proxy pages under the aegis of Varahe Analytics, most of them posted on the Paltu Paltan and Bharat Todo Gang accounts.
We also identified 11 micro-influencers, most from the rural Hindi heartland, regularly featuring in content across the 17 proxy pages. These accounts follow the same pattern: popular YouTubers creating pro-Hindutva and BJP videos who have in the last six months to one year been hyperactive on Instagram and amassed sizable followerships.
The accounts, @theprohindubhaiya and @rishi.tawania, with about 23,000 and 50,000 followers respectively, fit the same template. Identifying himself as Aatur Sharma on Instagram, @theprohindubhaiya makes reels where he addresses the audiences directly about alleged atrocities against Hindus, and how the Congress is a threat to India and the Sanatan Dharma. He also appears in several videos on the Bharat Todo Gang page, where he mimics and makes fun of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and minorities.
Sharma is also part of the Prashask Samiti, an online community propagating messages of Hindu Rashtra. Until a few months ago, he was the most popular face on the organisation's social media channels, with about two lakh followers across platforms. In these videos, he talks about Hindutva, and showers praises Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s "handling of the minorities".
Similarly, Rishi Tawania, who runs the account @Rishi.Tawania, has about 50,000 followers on Instagram. Until about six months ago, he ran the YouTube channel DharmAurMoksh. The channel with about 60,000 subscribers, his content displays a clear Hindutva shade, with one video analysing the “ideological problem with Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan”.
Now Tawania acts in reels run by the proxy pages; at times wearing a wig pretending to be Sunita Kejriwal, an Indian Revenue Service officer and the wife of Arvind Kejriwal.
Another youngster, Vinayak Dev Trivedi, has gone from making videos about Lucknow, cto calling out the Oppenheimer movie for insulting Hinduism on his YouTube channel, to now acting in reels where he spreads the BJP campaign motto of “Ab ki baar,400 paar” while greeting his Muslim friend with “Bura Na Mano Modi hai”. Trivedi can be seen in numerous reels posted on Paltu Paltan, Ek Akela Sab Pe Bhaari, and the Bharat Todo Gang.
THE SPIDER WEB OF INFLUENCERS AND ACCOUNTS
Decode found evidence of a network of anonymous proxy accounts that use influencers from rural and smaller cities to make content spreading hate and disinformation and trolling Opposition leaders — all of them created by Varahe Analytics. Others with large Instagram and YouTube follower bases who feature on these pages are Sardarji Speak, Jaat Ki Jaatni, Rohit Sangwan, Raj Saraf and Satya Tiwari.
Influencers working with politicians is both commonplace and a continuous initiative, especially for political parties with large campaign purses. It is a symbiotic relationship, giving the political party wider reach and influencers an intangible stamp of endorsement by association. But this transactional relationship also involves money, with influencers getting paid by the political parties or politicians themselves for promulgating their talking points.
In its ongoing series Viral For Votes, Decode has reported how the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are witnessing influencers being used to propagate government agendas. We have reported how influencers drumming up publicity for the Centre and campaigning for the BJP are not disclosing that this content is “paid” and “sponsored”, a clear violation of Instagram’s policies.
It is then pertinent that both the influencers and the proxy pages linked to Varahe Analytics are going to great lengths to hide this relationship.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an influencer with over four lakh followers on Instagram — who has made several appearances on the Bharat Todo Gang, Ek Akela Sabpe Bhaari, and a state proxy page — confirmed to Decode that he was approached by the social media team of Varahe Analytics to make such reels. They said: "I am paid to make videos about the elections and the opposition. But there is nothing wrong with this. I believe in the cause and have been talking about the same issue and topics on my accounts for over 3-4 years now." The creator, however, refused to reveal the amount the agency paid for each video.
An analysis of the Paltu Paltan account on Instagram showed that it routinely “collabs” with a handful of other accounts. All the accounts have similar display photos and follow each other. But the similarities do not end there. Many of these accounts use the same actors showing a clear link between them.
We went through many of the accounts that Varahe Analytics had tagged in its reels and found a network of nearly 20 anonymous Instagram accounts, which included names like Desameindesharyana, Chhattisgarh Chaupal, Jharkhand Chaupal, MahaBighaadi, Modi Saathe Rajasthan, and MP Bole Bhajpa, which cater to state-specific politics.
Then there are Bharat Todo Gang, In Se Na Ho Paega, and Paltu Paltan, which act exclusively as anonymous troll accounts. The page HokageModiSama posts AI-generated photos of Modi and runs a merchandising site “modisama.com”, where one can buy t-shirts and mugs supporting the BJP and Modi. There are also accounts solely dedicated to posting about Modi and BJP leaders like Ek Akela Sab Pe Bhaari, Maaveeran Modi, and Modi Guaranteed. All the accounts mentioned have at least two backup accounts each and cross-post the same content.
AT THE CORE OF THE WEB : VARAHE ANALYTICS
On March 30, a video of Arvind Kejriwal singing and playing a guitar in jail went viral. It was shared by several Bharatiya Janata Party functionaries including Richa Rajpoot, the social media head of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) BJP Youth Wing. The video was fake, with the images and the audio of Kejriwal singing, both generated using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).
BOOM fact-checked the video and found a watermark for the Instagram account @paltupaltan indicating it was made by the page. At the outset, Paltu Paltan seems no different from the garden variety troll accounts run by BJP supporters. It checks all the boxes: anonymous, unidentified people acting in reels, trolling Opposition leaders, targeting minorities, and at times spreading misinformation, all the while glorifying Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and the BJP.
Data available on the Meta Ad library for Paltu Paltan from January 31 to April 29, a period of 90 days, shows it spent ₹651,095 on Instagram ads. Before January 31, since its creation in June 2022, the page spent just a little over ₹80,000 in ads. Meta Ad library guidelines dictate that any page running an ad about social issues or politics is required to furnish details of the advertiser like phone number, email ID, and location. Contact details for the page ads contained the email address “growth@varaheanalytics.com”.
One of the pages routinely tagged by Paltu Paltan is Inse Na Ho Paega, an account with just 616 followers. Many viral Reels that mimic Sunita Kejriwal, Delhi's Education Minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Atishi Marlena, and Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Surpiya Shrinate, adding their faces using face-swap technology originated from this account.
In one such reel posted by Inse Na Ho Paega in April, Decode noticed the vehicle number of the motorcycle used by one of the actors was visible for a few seconds. Using the Vahan portal, we found that it was owned by a video editor at Varahe Analytics.
We noticed repeated appearances of a woman in reels shared by this page, mimicking Sunita Kejriwal and Sonia Gandhi using face-swap technology. In a reel posted by the Bharat Todo Gang account in February, the same woman explained how the I.N.D.I.A. bloc parties are traitors. She also appeared in a reel posted by the Ek Akela Sab Pe Bhaari account in April, this time explaining to her on-screen son the sad state of affairs in India before 2014. These posts contained no information about who this actor was.
The same goes for the actor who plays a fake Arvind Kejriwal on the In Se Na Ho Paega page and can be seen in two other anonymous accounts, Ek Akela Sab Pe Bhaari and the Himachal Pradesh-specific page Bol Hi Himachal.
We identified both and their LinkedIn profiles confirmed that they work with Varahe Analytics as content creators and consultants. We are not revealing the names of the Varahe Analytics employees featured in the reels to protect their identities.
WHAT IS VARAHE ANALYTICS
Varahe Analytics is a political consultancy firm contracted by the BJP to design and run campaigns across social media platforms for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
On Linkedin, Varahe Analytics Pvt Ltd describes itself as one of "India’s leading integrated political consulting firms" that "specialises in orchestrating data-driven all-encompassing election campaigns" which combines "data-backed insights and in-depth ground intelligence into a holistic electoral campaign".
A 2023 report by The Print, states that Varahe Analytics has worked with the BJP for election-related campaigns. The story details how the firm, incorporated in Chennai on August 26, 2021, is run by Rangesh Sridhar, who is “said to be closely associated with the BJP since 2014”. The report noted that the firm is “micro-managed by its directors — wife Dhanya, father Uruppattur Krishnaswamy, and Suresh Shreyas Bharadwaj."
The consultancy has a barebones website with no details about its founders, team members, location, or contact information. The only available details are in the “Work” section, which showcases the organisations’ projects — several photos from offline events organised by Varahe Analytics for the BJP-led state governments of Goa, Assam, and Uttarakhand. These photos feature, among others, BJP President JP Nadda and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
A November 2023 story reported by The Economic Times describes Varahe Analytics as Rangesh Sridhar’s firm that works exclusively for BJP like ABM, a firm founded by Himanshu Singh in 2016, which reportedly came up with the idea of the “Main Bhi Chowkidar” campaign. It noted that Vahare Analytics "mostly handles the southern states and is handling BJP’s campaign in Chhattisgarh".
Decode has reached out to Varahe Analytics and the story will be updated when we receive a response.
This is a part of Decode series ‘Viral For Votes’, where we track content creators and their role in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.