A one year old video showing people protesting in front of an office of Life Insurance Corporation against the government's decision in 2020 to divest its stake through an initial public offering of the company, has been revived and is being shared as recent.
BOOM found that the video has been on internet since February 2020.
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The video is viral in the backdrop of the annual budget that was presented on February 1, 2021. Following the budget presentation, LIC employees in Tamil Nadu had protested against the government's' 'disinvestment in the corporation'.
However, the viral video is not recent and had been widely shared around the same time last year. The video has been shared with a Hindi caption that translates to 'Now protests have started in LIC too. Trade unions raised slogans demanding Modi to take back his decision'.
(Hindi: LIC में भी विद्रोह शुरू हुआ, ट्रेड यूनियनों ने मोदी को अपने निर्णय वापिस लेने की पुरज़ोर मांग के साथ नारे लगाए)
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Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search on one of the screenshots of the viral post and found the same video shared from several Twitter handles and Facebook pages in February last year.
View below a tweet sharing the video with the same caption on February 4, 2020.
Other such tweets can be viewed here and here.
The video had been widely shared on Facebook too.
A banner seen in the video has All India Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Buddhists L.I.C. Employees written over it which confirms that the protest was held by an emplyoees' union.
Taking cue about the protest being from last year, BOOM did a keyword search and found several news reports from last year about the life insurer unions' deciding to launch a series of protests against the Central government's decision on selling a part of its holding in the LIC by Initial Public Offering (IPO).
According to an article published in The News Minute on February 3, 2020, the decision had come after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced in last year's budget 'that the government will be going for a partial stake sale in LIC through an initial public offer in the next financial year'.
We also found a video shared by Hindustan Times that shows protests by LIC unions from all across the country.
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BOOM was unable to independently verify where the protest took place.
