New Delhi, July 4: The Narendra Modi dispensation, which has used social media as a force multiplier and reaped huge political dividends, is now having to reckon with its rumour-spreading powers that threaten to throw a spanner in the government's GST blitz.

In the first three days of the rollout of the new tax regime, the finance ministry has had to step in twice to counter rumours that were spreading like wildfire across social media platforms, particularly WhatsApp.

While one rumour fell purely in the realm of payments, the second and more pernicious one had the potential of vitiating the atmosphere as it suggested preferential treatment under GST to mosques and churches, triggering animated debates on WhatsApp on the BJP's favourite subject of minority appeasement.

"There are some messages going around on social media stating that temple trusts have to pay the GST while the churches & mosques are exempt. We request people at large not to start circulating such wrong messages on social media. This is completely untrue because no distinction is made in the GST law on any provision based on religion," the finance ministry tweeted on Monday evening.

Earlier, on Sunday, revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia went on Twitter to clarify: "A wrong message is doing rounds on social media that if u make payment of utility bills by credit cards, you will be paying GST twice. This is completely untrue. Please do not recirculate such message without checking it with authority."

Pratik Sinha of Alt News - an anti-propaganda site that counters fake news and has caught the government misrepresenting facts more than once - said both sets of rumours could be tracked down to those supportive of the Modi government. "This time, the multi-headed hydra has come to bite them," Sinha told The Telegraph .

Asked whether the use of fake news is a recent phenomenon, Sinha said that at the level of propaganda, it was always a case of half-truths and most political parties indulged in it. "Political propaganda is full of half-truths. But if you look at the fake news machinery as in fake news sites, you will find 95 per cent of them favour the Right wing."

The proliferation of fake news sites has, in turn, given rise to several fact-checking websites to counter the huge propaganda machinery that has mushroomed over the past couple of years.