New Delhi: Hiren Joshi, Officer on Special Duty or OSD (Communications & Information Technology) in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), is an important name in the country’s most powerful office at the joint secretary rank since 2019. He is a permanent presence in WhatsApp message feeds of prominent journalists in big media, directing headlines and as per many, also deciding the slant and nature of coverage big media should undertake. He has been in the news and part of several social media conversations for being silently benched, as after October 12, 2025 “there were no WhatsApps from him”. Some journalists say the directions went missing later, after November 24.

There was no memo, notification, nothing, but it seemed he had left groups and was not contacting the media, as he was known to do.

He has made a comeback now in WhatsApp groups, rejoining them, but that has provoked another round of speculation and more interest.

Social media has been agog with various speculative theories being given about his departure, and Congress leader and spokesperson, Pawan Khera asked some questions yesterday (December 3), saying that Joshi had played a very important role in “strangling Indian democracy” and so people needed to know “why his associate in the Law Commission was unceremoniously asked to leave and vacate his house,” also, “who are his business partners? India has the right to know.” Khera referred to conversations about possible business associations of Joshi and foreign travels which were “being discussed on social media”. Meanwhile, an online news outlet appears to have taken down its article on the press conference.

Newslaundry cites Open Magazine as saying that “Hiren Joshi isn’t just part of Modi’s ecosystem – he is the ecosystem’s motherboard. Modi’s point person. The man who didn’t merely advise the PM on digital strategy but built the entire NaMo online universe from scratch.”

Joshi is an electronics engineer from Pune with a PhD from the Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management, Gwalior. He was teaching at the Manikya Lal Verma Textile and Engineering College, Bhilwara, with over 18 years of teaching experience, when in 2008, the then-chief minister of Gujarat, Modi, picked him after he fixed a technical glitch in an event where Modi was present.

Congress handles started asking where he had gone.

The sudden resignation of senior former IAS officer Navneet Sehgal as Prasar Bharti chairperson, accepted within 24 hours of him putting in his papers, is another significant departure in the otherwise opaque communications machinery of the Modi government.

Sehgal's quitting, just 20 months into a three-year tenure further fuelled speculation around what was going on and if his sudden exit was linked in some way to Joshi’s ‘absence’.

It is well known that there have been unprecedented exits of Modi government appointees, with little information before from key posts, like finance secretary S.C. Garg, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governors like Urjit Patel, Ashok Lavasa from his job as election commissioner (India’s first) followed by Arun Goyal, another election commissioner, that too days before the general election was to be notified. But there was no explanation offered, and “personal reasons” was what was usually cited.

The full facts about the latest, the sudden exit of Jagdeep Dhankhar, the vice president are yet to emerge.

Joshi is back and there is nothing official about his brief time away, but senior advocate Sanjay Hegde has asked if he had been “Dhankhared”.

Others were speculating if the interest that the principal opposition party was showing in this matter with the parliament session on was the reason why he had been quietly brought back.

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