'Anil Upadhyay' Resurfaces, This Time as Congress MLA Taking Dig at Own Party

The person seen in the video is Vinay Kumar Singh from the Janshakti Party (Rashtriya), not a Congress member.

A video claiming to show a Congress MLA named Anil Upadhyay is being shared on social media with the claim that the politician took a dig at his own party, accusing Congress leaders – Rahul, Priyanka and Sonia Gandhi – of inciting riots in the streets, rather than debating in the Parliament.

However, we found the character of Anil Upadhyay is a fictitious one and resurfaces on the internet time and again with various claims.

The person seen in the video is Vinay Kumar Singh who had contested the 2020 Delhi elections on a Janshakti Party (Rashtriya) ticket from the Patparganj (East) constituency.

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CLAIM

In the 1:57-minute video, the person can be heard saying that a total of 100 people, including few journalists, must be put behind bars or 'shot dead', then there will be absolutely no issues in the passage of Bills like the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) (now an Act), among others.

Several social media users have shared the video on Facebook and Twitter and the archived links can be seen here, here, and here.

The video was also widely shared in 2020 with the same claim and an archived version can be accessed here.

The Quint also received a query of the video along with the claim on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

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WHAT WE FOUND

When we looked at the video, the logo used in the video could be identified as 'The Newspaper'.

Taking cue from here, we looked on YouTube and found 'The Newspaper' channel.

We found the longer version of the video on their YouTube channel published on 5 March 2020 and that part that is viral can be heard from 00:45-2:41. However, in the video, the person was only identified as 'Professor' in the title of the video.

We then searched on their YouTube handle using the word 'प्रोफेसर' and found the person in another video where he has been identified as 'Vinay Singh'.

We then looked for Vinay Singh on MyNeta, and found that he was associated with the Janshakti Party (Rashtriya).

We also looked for his details in the Election Commission of India (ECI) website and checked affidavits and found one by Vinay Kumar Singh, which also had his photo.

We also reached out to Vinay Singh and he confirmed to us over phone that he is in the viral video and he is associated with the Janshakti Party (Rashtriya) only.

Further, we also looked on MyNeta to find if there are any Congress leaders with the name 'Anil Upadhyay' and found none.

The Quint has earlier debunked multiple claims around the fictional political character 'Anil Upadhyay' and you can read it here, here, here, here, and here.

Clearly, a video of a politician from Janshakti Party (Rashtriya) is being falsely shared as Congress MLA Anil Upadhyay.

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