The protesting tribal girl in this video has not been made a collector for two days - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 26, 2022
A video of a girl protesting is being shared on social media claiming that the girl was made a collector for two days. The protesting girl in the video was heard saying: “Otherwise sir, make us collectors. We are ready to take up the job. For whom is the government working? You are treating us as if we have come here to beg. Make some arrangements for our poor sir. We tribal people coming from far away. Do you know how much it costs?” (when translated from Hindi to English). This video further shows the visuals of a girl sitting in an officer’s chair. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a protesting girl who was made collector for two days.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows two unrelated video clips. The first video clip shows Nirmala Chauhan, an NSUI student from Madhya Pradesh’s Jabhua, protesting in front of the Jabhua district collector’s office in 2021. Nirmala Chauhan was not made a collector after this incident. The second video clip shows Dewas collector Chandramouli Shukla honouring a merit student of the District 10th Board Examination. Knowing a merit student’s wish to become a collector in future, Chandramouli Shukla made her sit in his chair. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The video shared in the post contains two different video clips. Let’s find the details of these video clips one by one.
Video clip 1:
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, a video with similar visuals was found published by the ‘Amar Ujala’ news website on 22 December 2021. ‘Amar Ujala’ reported it as visuals of an NSUI student protesting in front of the Jabhua collector’s office in Madhya Pradesh. ‘Amar Ujala’ published an article reporting the incident. Nirmala Chauhan, a first-year BA student reportedly chanted these slogans during the NSUI demonstration in front of the Jabhua collector’s office. Reporting the same, a few other news agencies have also published articles in December 2021. They can be seen here and here. According to these reports, under the leadership of NSUI, hundreds of students marched to the Jabhua collector’s office to give a memorandum to the collector. Expressing their agony of being stopped by barricades, Nirmala Chauhan had made these slogans.
When we searched to check whether Nirmala Chauhan was made a collector after this demonstration, we could not find any credible news report of such an incident. Following the demonstration, when Nirmala Chauhan’s video went viral with a claim that she had become a collector for two days, the Tribal Army through a tweet clarified that the rumours are baseless and fake.
Video clip 2:
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a video with similar visuals was found published on the ‘Dewas Live’ YouTube channel on 06 July 2020. ‘Dewas Live’ news channel reported it as the visuals of Dewas district collector Chandramouli Shukla honouring a 10th Board Examination merit student. According to the article published by ‘Dewas Live’, Chandramouli Shukla honoured 10 children of the district who got a place on the merit list of the state 10th Board Examination. Yukta Chowdary, who was 3rd on the merit list, expressed her wish to become a collector in future. Knowing her wish to become a collector, Chandramouli Shukla made Yukta Chowdary sit in his chair. This video has nothing to do with Nirmala Chauhan’s demonstration that took place a year later.
To sum it up, the protesting tribal girl in this video has not been made a collector for two days.