Sonam Wangchuk

Sonam Wangchuk is an Indian engineer, innovator, climate activist, and education reformist. He founded the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) in 1988, with the objective of reforming the schooling system so as to make it more appropriate both culturally and environmentally in Ladakh. He is also the inventor of the Ice Stupa technique, which creates artificial glaciers to store water in winter in the form of cone-shaped ice heaps. In the 2009 film ‘3 Idiots’, Wangchuk was seen as the inspiration for Aamir Khan’s character, Phunsukh Wangdu. In recognition of his work, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2018 for his community-driven reforms in education and sustainable development.

Wangchuk was born in Uleytokpo village near Leh, he was home-schooled until the age of nine. In 1975, when his father Sonam Wangyal became a minister in the Jammu and Kashmir government, the family moved to Srinagar where he was enrolled in a school that taught in English, Hindi, and Urdu. He later completed his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, in 1987. In 2011, he went to Earthen Architecture at Carteret School of Architecture in Grenobe, France, for higher studies.

Sonam Wangchuk, on September 10, 2025, began a 35-day fast demanding statehood and extension of Sixth Schedule to Ladakh. Soon after, two elderly people participating in the fast were hospitalized, after which violence erupts, parallels drawn to Nepal's Gen Z protests. According to news reports, protesters damaged the Hill Council office and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Office, leaving four people dead and several injured in the clashes. The government blamed Wangchuk for misleading the people, Wangchuk, however said in his social media that "outburst of the young generation that brought them onto the streets.” Meanwhile, his Himalayan Institute of Alternative Learning (HIAL) remained under CBI probe, where land allotment has already been cancelled by the Ladakh administration.

BOOM had debunked misinformation about Sonam Wangchuk. BOOM factchecked video of activist Sonam Wangchuk demanding a plebiscite for Kashmir. BOOM found that the claims are false and in the original video, Wangchuk is heard talking about the status of Ladakh as a Union Territory; nowhere in the clip does he demand a referendum for Kashmir.