Anirudh S. K. 
New Delhi: Pro-Mahayuti “shadow accounts” on Facebook spread communal advertisements ahead of the Maharashtra elections and spent over seven times more than their opposition counterparts on ads in recent weeks, a report by civil society organisations said.
Some advertisements run by pro-Mahayuti shadow accounts featured hate speech and were not taken down, despite hate speech being banned on Meta platforms, it said.
The report also flagged activity by government accounts it said raised questions about the misuse of the public exchequer.
Titled ‘Maharashtra’s Shadow Politics: How Meta Permits, Profits From and Promotes Shadow Political Advertisements’, the report released on November 13 was prepared by the Dalit Solidarity Forum, Eko, Hindus for Human Rights, the Indian American Muslim Council and the India Civil Watch International organisations.
In it, the civil society groups described the shadow accounts they studied as largely containing unverifiable or no contact information.
“This shadow infrastructure does not even meet the limited restrictions established by Meta for disclaimers in India,” the report also said, referring to Meta rules saying that ads about social issues, elections and politics require ‘paid for by’ disclaimers that “accurately represent the name of the entity or person responsible for the ad”.
“For several shadow pages, the disclaimer name is a vague term that cannot be traced back to any particular entity,” the report continued.
Such shadow accounts supported both the Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), it said. However, the number of pro-Mahayuti shadow accounts it counted outnumbered the pro-MVA ones by fourteen times.
While the report said the shadow accounts concerned were run by parties in the Mahayuti or the MVA, The Wire could not independently verify this.
Ads target ‘land jihad’, ‘politics of fatwas’
An example of a pro-Mahayuti Facebook page the civil society groups identified as a shadow page is ‘Maha Bighadi’, among whose ads is a poster – seemingly AI-generated – depicting bearded men wearing skull caps charging in the direction of the viewer and which warns of “land jihad”.
“Hindus, know the modus operandi of jihadis. Land jihad is done by usurping the land. An illegal mosque [is built] over time. When the local administration goes to demolish the construction, they create riots,” the poster said in Marathi as per the report.
In a different ad, Maha Bighadi depicts a man in a skull cap along with the caption “See the consequences of one wrong opinion! Courage of the jihadi tribe in Chhatrapati Shivaji’s Maharashtra. Now it has increased so much that they want 15% reserved seats in the election.”
Another such page is the pro-BJP ‘Lekha Jokha Maharashtracha’ on Facebook, which sponsored an ad cautioning Hindus to “beware, defeat the politics of fatwas and vote for Hindutva Mahayuti”.
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No information was provided on either Maha Bighadi’s or Lekha Jokha Maharashtracha’s disclaimers for verification, the report said, adding that the two pages spent Rs 27.62 lakh and Rs 42.12 lakh respectively in the 90 days between August 5 and November 2.
The report accused the Mahayuti’s main party, the BJP, of following a “differential” style of campaigning in which a “clean official front” is kept distinct from “a powerful perception-building attack machine through shadow pages”.
It also said that pro-BJP shadow accounts pushed content that was “overtly Islamophobic”, characterised by “fear mongering” and “full of hate speech”.
On the contrary, the report said it found “no hate speech or communal content” among the ads paid for by accounts aligned with the MVA.
Maratha issue prominent not on official pages but shadow ones
Even as issues concerning the state’s Marathas – including the demand within the community of OBC reservation – have taken centre stage this election season, political parties’ official pages on Facebook tend to be silent on the topic, the report said.
However, it added, the issue is prominently highlighted by shadow accounts, which “yet again reinforces the fact that shadow accounts are used to circulate politically sensitive content without being traceable to political parties.”
Shadow accounts “constantly rake[d] up the Maratha quota issue” by “branding the opposition as ‘anti-quota’ and ‘anti-Maratha’,” the report also said.
It reported that pro-MVA accounts put less emphasis on the Maratha issue but occasionally pushed content relating to Maratha pride.
Pro-Mahayuti accounts outspend pro-opposition counterparts
Another point of contrast between pro-Mahayuti and pro-MVA Facebook accounts that the report studied were the amounts of money they spent on ads.
Fifty-six shadow accounts promoting the Mahayuti pushed 32,114 ads between August 5 and November 2, spending a total of Rs 3.32 crore, while four pro-MVA shadow accounts sponsored 771 ads in the same period of time, costing them Rs 50.5 lakh – this amounted to a sevenfold difference between the two sides, the report said.
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In fact, the number of impressions garnered per rupee spent on ads for one pro-BJP account was higher than those for the official account run by the saffron party, the report said.
According to its findings, while the official BJP Maharashtra Facebook page between August and November saw nine impressions per rupee spent on ads, Lekha Jokha Maharashtracha – which the report alleged is “the main node of the BJP shadow network” – enjoyed 91 impressions per rupee spent.
Eko campaigner Maen Hammad said in a statement: “What’s unfolding in Maharashtra is a repeat offense by Meta – profiting from election ads while ignoring hate speech and illegal shadow campaigns boosting the BJP. Meta has prioritised revenue over enforcing Indian electoral laws and its own guidelines, allowing communal attacks and divisive narratives to spread unchecked.
“This isn’t just a policy failure; it’s a business model where profit takes priority over democracy and community safety.”
Government accounts spent money on ads largely before elections, report says
The report said it found that four Maharashtra government department pages spent money on ads in the months before the general elections earlier this year, stopped advertising after that, and resumed spending ahead of the state assembly elections.
These pages were for the Maharashtra Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board, the state Jal Jeevan Mission, the Other Backward Bahujan Welfare Department and the state women and children’s department, it said.
This “raises serious questions about the misuse of the public exchequer”, the civil society groups said.