Chased, Filmed, And Invoiced

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It has been three weeks since my last newsletter. The fortnightly promise is starting to feel like a suggestion. I have been catching up with what feels like a never-ending news cycle. But I am back this week with a document on the Election Commission of India’s website.

The Election Commission of India has started uploading expenditure statements filed by political parties for the 2026 assembly elections. Not every party has filed yet. But the BJP has, for Bengal.

Buried in those spreadsheets and schedules, under the broad heading of "electronic media advertising," was something we at Decode have been chasing for years: a paper trail connecting political money to the content creators and YouTube channels that millions of people watch as news.

Twenty Bengali creators, YouTube channels, and digital news pages. A combined Rs 2.73 crore from the BJP's central headquarters. Paid during the West Bengal election campaign window — March 15 to May 6, 2026. The names are there. The amounts are there.

If you have been following Decode, you've seen that we have revealed that the line between political campaigning and online content has been deliberately, systematically erased. Now there's a receipt.

Our Viral For Votes series, which we started during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and which GIJN covered as part of its reporting on Indian investigative journalism, tracked exactly this: how creators were being folded into party machinery. 

We reported on how influencers promoting government campaigns — from Ayodhya temple reels to Mathura Holi to Deepotsav on the Saryu — were getting paid by state tourism departments but posting without a single "paid partnership" tag or #ad, violating Instagram's own policies.

We reported on how a BJP-hired consultancy, Varahe Analytics, was running a network of anonymous proxy pages using young YouTube influencers — including a 15-year-old from Bihar — to post communal content and troll opposition leaders. We traced how a TikTok star from Indore was turned into a lavish party influencer. We found that over 60 percent of the National Creators Award winners had posted content related to Hinduism, meeting BJP leaders, or endorsing government schemes. We mapped an entire influencer operation run out of Madhya Pradesh that functioned as an extended arm of BJP's IT Cell.

Every time, the response was predictable. These creators said they were promoting "culture, not politics." There was never a paper trail to prove otherwise. 

Now let me take you through some of the names on this receipt.

Suddhashil Ghosh runs Priyo Bandhu Media, a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers. His channel claims to provide "100% genuine content" and objective news analysis. His Facebook bio describes him as a "fighter to save Hindus, Bengalis, and Sanatanis." The ECI filing says the BJP paid him Rs 51 lakh. When police raided his home in September 2024 over remarks about the Supreme Court, the BJP framed him as a courageous journalist persecuted by the state. The Rs 51 lakh filing recontextualises all of that.

Bangla Hunt — or rather, its parent company Banglahunt Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. — received Rs 22.5 lakh. If that name sounds familiar to Decode readers, it should. 

Last November, we published "Chased, Filmed, Accused" — a story about media outlets storming into slums across Kolkata, chasing residents with cameras, and accusing them of being Bangladeshi immigrants. Bangla Hunt was one of those outlets. Its reporter pursued a 23-year-old garbage depot worker named Rafiqul Sardar through his neighbourhood, shouting that he was a Bangladeshi. That video was viewed more than 15 million times. Sardar had electoral roll documents going back to 2002 proving his family were Indian citizens from Joynagar.

During the election, Bangla Hunt also amplified a clipped video of TMC politician Byron Biswas, making it appear as if he had conceded defeat. Fact-checkers later found the full video showed his remarks had been stripped of context.

A channel that chased poor people through slums, branded them foreigners without evidence, and circulated manipulated clips during an election — was on the party's payroll. Rs 22.5 lakh.

The Wall (Noticias Infomedia Pvt Ltd), one of Bengal's biggest digital news platforms — Rs 41.3 lakh. News Bangla — Rs 22 lakh. Political Daily — Rs 20.8 lakh. Rudra Barta, a channel with nearly half a million subscribers that makes no pretence of neutrality and explicitly amplifies Hindutva ideology — Rs 11 lakh. Sayak Chakraborty, the creator behind the Olypub beef controversy that got a Muslim waiter arrested in January — Rs 2.5 lakh. 

And then there is Priyanka Sarkar, known as RJ Priyanka — a former radio jockey from Siliguri who posts about food, travel, relationships, Bengali culture. She has 3.3 million followers on Facebook. Her audience follows her for lifestyle content, not quite politics. She received Rs 15 lakh. That is interesting because when political messaging is woven into content your audience trusts, it feels personal and apolitical; it bypasses every filter a viewer would normally have while watching a party broadcast.

None of them disclosed these payments. No "paid partnership" tag. No #ad. No disclaimer of any kind.

And about that document: the ECI specifically designed two schedules, 24A and 24B, with dedicated columns for virtual campaign expenditure. There is even a field for content creator names. In the BJP's West Bengal filing, both schedules were left blank. Virtual campaign spending was declared nil. The twenty creators were instead listed under a generic "electronic media advertising" category, recorded as flat retainers for the full campaign period, with no specific video, post, or URL attached. 

You can see that money changed hands. You cannot see which viral video it bought.

So say you are a curious citizen in Hooghly or Burdwan, scrolling YouTube at 10 pm. Priyo Bandhu Media comes up. It has a studio. It has graphics. The anchor is speaking in that urgent, authoritative tone that news anchors have perfected. There is no visual difference between this channel and a newsroom. There is a Rs 51 lakh difference, but nothing on your screen tells you that.

Or you are watching Bangla Hunt. A reporter is chasing someone through a slum, demanding documents, calling them Bangladeshi. It looks like an investigation. It feels like journalism. The reporter seems angry on your behalf. You share the video. Fifteen million people do.

But is any of this journalism?

The simplest definition I have ever come across: you look outside your window, it is raining, you tell people it is raining. Now imagine someone pays you to say it is sunny. You set up a studio, and you tell your ten lakh subscribers that the weather is beautiful. That is what the ECI filing puts on paper. Except instead of weather, it is an election. And instead of a window, it is the information people use to decide who governs them.

We spend a lot of time talking about deepfakes these days. AI-generated videos, cloned voices, fabricated quotes. And that conversation is crucial. But a deepfake is at least something you can catch. You can run it through a tool, flag it, label it synthetic. What do you do with a creator who has spent years building trust with an audience and then quietly takes money from a political party without telling anyone? You cannot run trust through a detection tool. There is no watermark on credibility.

This filing will not change anything overnight. The creators will keep posting. The channels will keep running. But the next time one of these channels tells you they are just delivering the news, you can look up what that news cost.

If you have been following Decode's coverage of political influencers and elections, I'd love to hear what you think. Reply to this email, or write to me. And if someone forwarded this to you — subscribe. It is free, and I promise to try harder on the fortnightly thing.

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