By Oishani Bhattacharya & Ankita Mahalanobish
An informed citizenry is the bedrock of a strong democracy. Likewise, a misinformed citizen — someone who confidently holds false notions and easily falls for propaganda — is prone to making incorrect choices that are detrimental for the health of a republic. In the widely acclaimed book ‘Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign‘ (1954), which is a study of why people vote the way they vote, political scientists Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfeld, and William McPhee stressed on the necessity of the democratic citizen to be “well informed about political affairs” and “to know what the issues are… what the relevant facts are, what alternatives are proposed… what the likely consequences are…”
Like other years, in 2025 too, debunking false political narratives and propaganda occupied a large part of Alt News’s work in the field of misinformation and disinformation. The year witnessed several major headline-making events, including India’s launch of Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in May and elections in multiple Indian states. As is often the case during such high-impact events, they triggered a surge in misinformation, compounding confusion and misleading the public. The present analysis shows how much of political misinformation was driven by political parties, leaders, social media influencers, media outlets et al, who were targeted most and who benefited from them.
To begin with, here is a table that shows a timeline of major events/political discourses that dominated the previous year.
In 2025, Alt News published a total of 590 articles. This includes 486 fact-check reports, and 104 reports — analytical pieces, reports on hate crime and hate speech and critiques of the mainstream media and social media platforms.
Out of the 486 fact checks, 159, or approximately 33%, looked at political misinformation. These are cases where the clear source or target of misinformation/disinformation was a political party or a leader, or where the claims were associated with a political event or issue.
Out of these 159 political fact checks, in 98 cases, the false claims favoured the BJP or its leaders. In other words, 61% of viral political misinformation in 2025 was pro-BJP in nature. In contrast, only 34 viral false claims were amplified in support of a non-BJP political party. This goes to show the extent to which the BJP camp (political leaders, the party’s IT cell, various agencies and the pro-BJP social media army) used misinformation and disinformation to create narratives in the party’s favour.
Readers might recall that in 2018, addressing BJP social media workers in Rajasthan’s Kota, then BJP president Amit Shah had boasted that the party had the power to make any message go viral, whether real or fake. “We are capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true of fake,” he had stated.
Political Leaders Amplifying Misinformation
Every fact-check report published by Alt News documents the source of misinformation alongside the targets. From the data of all published reports in 2025 compiled by Alt News journalists, we found that misinformation shared by users affiliated to political parties made up approximately 25% of all political fact checks, which is 40 fact-checks out of a total of 159. In other words, one in every four false claim debunked by us was shared by political personalities.
Who precisely?
As can be seen in the table below, BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya topped the list of political figures who spread misinformation in 2025. False claims made by Malviya appeared in 12 fact checks published by Alt News between January and December 2025. Malviya was followed by the BJP leader and leader of Opposition in West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, who appeared in three fact checks, the same as BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla. BJP MP from Odisha Sambit Patra was found spreading misinformation on two occasions, same as Congress leader Srinivas BV.
Among the many instances where Amit Malviya shared misinformation, one was a part of an interview of political activist Yogendra Yadav that Maviya posted without context, claiming that Yadav had suggested that Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of ‘vote theft’ lacked evidence. Alt News found that the claim was entirely false. On the contrary, Yadav stated that the allegations levelled by Rahul Gandhi were shaping public perception and making people question the BJP and the ECI’s credentials.
Other than the above personalities, several other prominent political figures, such as Union home minister Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, were found to be sharing misinformation at least once.
As represented in the above three graphics, 22 NDA leaders (21 from BJP and one from LJP) feature in the list of political personalities who were found peddling political misinformation in 2025, as against 8 from non-NDA parties (four from Congress, three AP and one each from Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena UBT).
On October 11, the X page, The Office of Home Minister Amit Shah (@AmitShahOffice) shared Census data from 1951 to 2011, highlighting a steady decline in the proportion of Hindus and an increase in the Muslim population. It claimed that between 2001 and 2011, the Hindu population grew by 16.8%, compared to a 24.6% increase among Muslims, and attributed this difference in growth rates to “infiltration.”
Alt News found Amit Shah’s claim misleading. While Census data shows a small increase in the Muslim population share and a decline in the Hindu share, the growth rates of both communities have been falling over time, with a sharper decline among Muslims. Additionally, our findings reveal that there is no evidence to support claims that “infiltration” is driving these demographic changes.
Most Targeted Individuals in 2025
As many as 46 out of the 159 political fact checks (approximately 29%) this year targeted public figures, predominantly politicians and social activists.
While carefully analysing the data, we found that in the year 2025, Rahul Gandhi emerged as the most frequent target of political misinformation, appearing as the target in 17 out of 46 reports (approximately 37%). Notably, the next in rank for the most targeted individual was Sonam Wangchuk. The now-incarcerated Ladakhi activist was targeted six times this year. Third on the list was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was targeted with political misinformation five times in 2025.
Other frequent targets include political figures such as Akhilesh Yadav, Arvind Kejriwal and Asaduddin Owaisi (three times each), Mamata Banerjee, Prashant Kishor, Priyanka Gandhi, Kanhaiya Kumar, Yogi Adityanath and Kangana Ranaut (twice each). Check the chart below:
Apart from political figures, influential personalities like Chief of Army Staff Upendra Dwivedi and Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh also found them at the wrong end of political misinformation. Even prominent actor Manoj Bajpayee was not spared. A video of an advertisement for Amazon Prime Video featuring him was edited to make it appear as a promotional voting campaign video for the RJD.
It is noteworthy in the above graphics that most of the political figures targeted by misinformation were from the Opposition bloc — 17 of them (marked in red in the above graphics) — as opposed to 11 from the National Democratic Alliance (marked in yellow).
In a classic case of political disinformation, several pro-BJP social media handles targeted Mahua Moitra alleging that she was called out by Anurag Thakur on December 11 for smoking inside the Parliament. However, Alt News investigation revealed that on that particular day, the Trinamool MP was not in Parliament; instead, she was in Krishnanagar, West Bengal, attending an administrative programme with chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The claims that Moitra was smoking an e-cigarette in the House on that date were false and baseless.
Misinformation from Official Channels
Apart from individuals affiliated with political parties, Alt News data suggest that misinformation was shared and amplified from various forms of official channels, including social media handles of political parties and government-affiliated organisations or individuals representing the same. In total, we found 17 such instances, out of which nine pages were BJP-affiliated, including the official X handle of the BJP (@BJP4India) and five pages affiliated with the Congress, two with the Aam Aadmi Party and one with the Samajwadi Party.
Other than this, false information was also disseminated by government sources and agencies such as the Press Information Bureau (PIB), Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam and National Security Advisor of India (NSA) Ajit Doval.
PIB, which is the nodal agency of the Government of India to disseminate information to the print and electronic media, was also found spreading false information. Ironically, the agency has a fact-check unit of its own. During a briefing on Operation Sindoor on May 7, 2025, PIB displayed footage of a blast, claiming that it depicted the 2019 Pulwana attack. However, Alt News found that the clip was originally from a blast in Iraq in 2007.
In a detailed report, Alt News also exposed a clear bias in PIB’s fact-checking work. The government agency consistently avoided fact-checking false claims made by the mainstream media during Operation Sindoor and the India-Pakistan conflict that followed.
We also analysed how a press release by the PIB stating that India was the fourth most equal country as per World Bank data was misleading.
On similar lines, NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam claimed that India had surpassed Japan and become the fourth largest economy. When Alt News checked IMF data, it turned out that India still stood at number five position.
Last year, we also fact-checked a press release published by the Prime Minister’s Office which falsely claimed that PM Modi had said that 25 million cars were sold in India annually. Alt News reviewed the entire speech concerned and found that the figure of 25 million was used to describe the sale of vehicles in general, not cars in particular.
In one bizarre case, NSA Ajit Doval was found spreading misinformation when he denied having made a comment which he had indeed made. In November 2025, after the Delhi blast, a video of Doval went viral, in which he could be heard saying that the ISI had recruited more Hindus than Muslims in India. Doval told the media that the clip was a deepfake. It was not.
Alt News found that the NSA had indeed stated that ISI recruited more Hindus than Muslims in a lecture at the Australia India Institute in 2014.
Social Media Users and Their Biases
In 77 cases, or approximately 48% of all political fact checks, social media users (who are not otherwise prominent figures) emerged as the source of misinformation. Out of these 77 false claims, 51 (approx. 66%) targeted non-NDA parties, while 26 targeted the NDA.
As is evident from the plot above, the volume of misinformation that targeted Opposition political parties was much larger in comparison to that targeting BJP and its allies. Several known pro-BJP social media handles went on a misinformation overdrive. These include users such as Jitendra Pratap Singh (@jpsin1), Raushan Sinha (@MrSinha_), and Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree).
Political misinformation amplified by Jitendra Pratap Sinha was debunked by Alt News nine times in 2025. All these were pro-BJP claims. Readers should note that these apart, he amplified communal anti-Muslim propaganda at least 11 times, which also helped create a pro-BJP political narrative.
Alarmingly, this user is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on X, and in his profile picture and header, he flaunts photos clicked with PM Modi.
We found pro-BJP influencer Raushan Sinha amplifying political misinformation 14 times in 2025. Sinha, readers should note was invited to the Prime Minister’s oath-taking ceremony in 2024, perhaps as a reward to his prolonged dedication to spreading pro-BJP misinformation and communal propaganda.
Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree), another vocal BJP supporter, was called out for sharing political misinformation seven times in 2025. It should be noted that Bagree, too, is followed on X by the Prime Minister and was invited to the oath-taking ceremony.
These users, one might say, constitutes BJP’s unofficial IT cell and work relentlessly to promote pro-BJP propaganda. In 2024 too, pro-Right social media users and propaganda outlets emerged as the biggest amplifier of misinformation. A third of all misinformation Alt News fact checked in 2024 was propagated by this group.
When the Messenger Misinforms
It is imperative to highlight another set of social media users who were found amplifying falsehood in 2025 — prominent journalists. In seven reports, we called out well-known mainstream journalists.
Alt News has published a detailed report on how media houses amplified misinformtion and communal propaganda in 2025, but in the present cases, false claims were made from a journalist’s social media account.
For instance, in January 2025, after Canadian MP Chandra Arya announced that he would be filing his nomination for prime ministerial elections in the country, a video of Arya speaking in Kannada inside the parliament was shared by journalists such as Nabila Jamal, Akshita Nandgopal, Smita Prakash and Pallavi Ghosh with misleading claims. Alt News found that the video was from 2022.
In another case, CNN News18 journalist Rahul Shivshankar posted a deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy where he appeared to be dancing. Shivshankar dis this on September 10, two days after large-scale protests in Nepal overthrew the government. The senior journalist commented that Nepal would also end up with a leader such as “comedian Zelenskyy”.
As we look back at 2025, the year has seen it all. The emergence of AI-generated content and deepfakes further destabilises an already fragile information ecosystem. At the same time, Operation Sindoor, India’s military retaliation to the Pahalgam terror attack, triggered a surge of misinformation in public discourse. Reporting on the conflict saw a systemic collapse and failure of journalistic integrity, where newsrooms/TV studios became the enablers of unverified claims, amplifying falsehood without any kind of cross-checking.
This article is republished from AltNews. Read the original article.
