A video of Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia's argument with the Mayor of a commune in Romania has gone viral. In the video, Scindia is seen getting annoyed and angry at a Romanian man who asked him to tell the students when they can leave instead of talking about general arrangements.
The Union minister is currently in Romania to handle the evacuation of Indians who have reached the country from Ukraine after Russia launched attacks on February 24.
BOOM found that the man in the video who questioned Scindia is Mihai Anghel, mayor of Snagov and the incident happened at the Community sports centre of the region where several Indian students had taken shelter.
In the video, Scindia can be first heard explaining how he helped a student accompanied with a pet board a return plane and how he would do the same here. To this, Anghel, interrupts him and says, "Talk about this kind of plans. Not dogs. Please...Please explain to them when they leave home…"
A visibly annoyed Scindia, then replies to Anghel and says, "Let me decide what I will speak on. Let me tell them what I have to tell them" and then requests Anghel to "stand back". At this, Anghel can be seen agitatedly approaching Scindia and telling him, "I provide shelter here, I provide food for these guys, not you. Kindly tell them..." to which the students can be heard clapping in support of Anghel.
The video has been widely shared with several mocking Scindia.
We first found various locations in Romania that Scindia is visiting to coordinate the evacuation process and found that he coordinated for Operation Ganga in Bucharest, Suceawa, Siret and Snagov among other places. A video tweeted by journalist Sameer Dixit, a journalist with Times Of India, showed students thanking the mayor of Snagov, Mihai Anghel and Scindia for helping them after they reached Romania.
Using this is a cue, we ran a keyword search for Anghel and found his photo published by a local Romanian media outlet. This photo matched the man seen in the viral video with Scindia.
Once we had confirmed that the man seen having a heated argument with Scindia is the mayor of Snagov commune in Romania, we traced a student, who took shelter there. The student, a third-year MBBS student at Vinnytsia Medical University who reached Delhi on Friday, said she and many of her friends were present when the argument ensued. She further confirmed the identity of Anghel and said the incident happened at the Snagov Community Sports Centre which had been converted into a shelter for students crossing over into the region from Ukraine.
Speaking to BOOM, the student said, "Scindia did not know that he was talking to the Mayor of the region and may be that's why he took that tone." She added that Scindia had interacted with every student at the centre but was not answering questions or giving specific details about the travel arrangements and when we would actually get to leave. "Many of us told Scindia that the interaction is of no use if we don't get to go home and to this he said, I want to interact first, don't tell me what to do. Even to students who were trying to ask him questions, he said the same. This annoyed several of us as were already tired and tensed," she explained.
She also recorded a video of Scindia's spat with Mayor Anghel added, "I won't call it a fight. It was a misunderstanding, I think. Scindia did not know that he was talking to the Mayor. One of the students who was coordinating everything later told Scindia that he should not talk to the Mayor like that as he is the one who has been taking care of us and providing us with food and all facilities. Later, we saw Scindia have a long chat with Anghel and they hugged it out."