Amid ongoing protests against the University Grants Commission's (UGC) new regulations, a video showing people smearing black ink on posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah has surfaced on social media.
The footage is being circulated with the claim that members of the "Savarna" (upper-caste) community are defacing the images to protest against the new UGC rules.
BOOM found that the claim is false. The viral video is from a Congress protest held in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, on December 17, 2025, and is unrelated to the recent controversies surrounding the UGC.
The Claim
Social media users are sharing the video with captions suggesting that the upper-caste community has burned and smeared ink on posters of Modi and Shah in opposition to the "UGC Bill." (archive).
What We Found
Our fact-check revealed that the footage is from 2025 and shows a political protest by the Congress party against the BJP following a court ruling.
1. Video Dates Back to December 17, 2025: We performed a reverse image search on keyframes from the viral clip and found a post on the official Instagram account of former Congress MLA Vikas Upadhyay, dated December 17, 2025. The post features photos and video clips that are identical to the viral footage, confirming the video existed long before the new UGC rules were announced in January 2026.
2. Congress Protest Over National Herald Case: According to the information in the post's caption, the Congress party held this protest in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, against the BJP following a court decision in the National Herald case on December 17, 2025. We identified the person smearing ink on the posters of Modi and Shah as Congress leader Vikas Upadhyay, who is the former MLA from Raipur West. A part of the viral video can also be seen in another post on his Instagram account from the same date.
3. The Recent UGC Controversy: The UGC notified the "Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations 2026" on January 13, 2026. The new rules sparked controversy by expanding the definition of caste-based discrimination to include Other Backward Classes (OBCs). While genuine protests by upper-caste student groups have taken place in cities like Varanasi and Lucknow, the viral video showing the defacing of posters is specifically from the unrelated Congress protest in 2025.
