Fact-Check: The Person in This Video is Not 'IAS Officer Vijay Singh'

We found that the person was Vijay Prashad, the director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

A video showing a person, talking at a conference in Glasgow, criticising the British for colonising and looting India has gone viral on the internet.

The claim: People have shared the video claiming that the person in the video is an India Administrative Services officer Vijay Singh. One caption read, "The daring of an Indian official on international platform in Glasgow".

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

The truth: The person in the video is Vijay Prashad, a journalist and director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He was speaking at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) summit, which was hosted in partnership between the UK and Italy in 2021.

How did we find that out:

• We used the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension to extract keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.

• While going through the search results, we came across a longer version of the video on the YouTube channel called COP26 Coalition, and was taken from COP26's People's Summit for Climate Justice event 'OUR TIME IS NOW'.

• The person in the video was identified as Vijay Prashad from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

• We found that the event took place on 9 November 2021 in Glasgow, UK and was live streamed on Climate Justice UK's Facebook page.

Who is Vijay Prashard?: We conducted a keyword search for Vijay Prashad and found that he is a historian, journalist, and Chief Editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi).

• We also found his verified Twitter handle and found a tweet from January 2022, wherein he had clarified that he was not an IAS officer.

From @BrutIndia comes a new packaged version of my speech at #COP26 - https://t.co/ImusYCFDye. It occasioned a rumour in Indian WhatsApp groups that I am a member of the Indian Administration Service; later I will reveal my lack of success at such exams (including IIT-JEE).

— Vijay Prashad (@vijayprashad) January 23, 2022

Conclusion: The person in the video is not an IAS officer but a journalist and director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)