New Delhi: He is 25. He has come from Jharkhand and lives in Mukherjee Nagar, the hub of UPSC coaching institutes in Delhi. He has attempted the UPSC exam four times. Now, for the surprise. He is not the average, hungry-for-UPSC, stressed-out aspirant like lakhs of young Indians here.
He is the angry whistleblower of the Mukherjee Nagar coaching industry—and he is anonymous.
Everybody is looking for him. The CEOs of top coaching institutes are flustered and eager to unmask him. Serving IAS and IPS officers want to talk to him and give him information and documents to expose. And frustrated students want to unload their grievances to him.
But nobody knows who he is. He runs an X handle called ‘UPSC ke lootere hain sab Dilli me’ (UPSC looters of Delhi), where he’s been posting prolifically for about a year, calling out teachers, coaching institutes, and even selected candidates. His profile picture shows him standing in front of the Bihar Public Commission office, his face hidden behind a peace symbol. His cover photo states “Hindi Medium” in bold Devanagari script. Beyond that, his identity remains a mystery. He even attended recent protest marches in Old Rajinder Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar with a COVID mask on.
The UPSC coaching whistleblower, who posts under @VivekGa54515036, accuses coaching institutes and teachers of misguiding aspirants and selling false dreams about UPSC preparation. He also targets some successful candidates, blaming them for becoming social media influencers who are complicit in this deception.
“Everyone is exploiting aspirants,” he said in an interview with ThePrint on condition of anonymity. “Coaching institutes want to sell their courses. Teachers want to become popular and so they feed aspirants fake motivation. The selected candidates do the same thing by posting about their power.”
Aspirants are ready to make every sacrifice to become IAS officers, but are treated like mere “customers”, he added. “Nobody cares about us.”
Soft-spoken and usually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, he blends in with the crowd. His nondescript appearance helps him observe everything around him, turning what he sees into fodder for his X account.
“I started this page all by myself but now 4-5 people have joined me in running this page,” he said. “But we have to be very careful about our identities.”
When three UPSC aspirants tragically drowned in a flooded Old Rajinder Nagar basement library in July, his X account became a leading voice of outrage. He posted photos and videos and many aspirants joined in the discussion.
One such post showed the flooded library and shared the heartbreaking story of one of the victims: “He just talked to mother and told her that he was studying in the library. He informed her that he will go to his room at 12 in the night but now he is no more.” This post reached more than 7 lakh people, getting 7,500 likes and 2,600 reposts.
मां ने बात ही किया था
मम्मी लाइब्रेरी में हूं पढ़ रहा हूं 12 बजे तक रूम पर जाउंगा। मां को 10 बजे ही फ़ोन गया son is no more,
कोचिंग माफिया तजुर्बा दे रहीं हैं pic.twitter.com/R6KEcDG4YA
— UPSC के लुटेरे हैं सब दिल्ली में (@VivekGa54515036) July 28, 2024
In just one month after the drownings, his X account gained over 10,000 followers. Now, he has more than 21,000.
Sometimes, he targets specific individuals. In one post, for instance, he posted an image of five doctors who became IAS officers, questioning why they would leave their high-paying medical careers.
“In today’s era of social media stardom and influencers, UPSC toppers are a matter of glamor and pride. All of them were doctors who left medicine to become IAS. But why? Despite the good pay. It started in 2015 with Tina Dabi securing the first position in the examination. Every action of the toppers is converted into a reel which is forwarded and tweeted a hundred times,” he wrote in a post that got nearly 100 reposts.
आज के सोशल मीडिया स्टारडम और प्रभावशाली लोगों के युग में, यूपीएससी टॉपर्स ग्लैमर और गौरव का विषय हैं।ये सभी डाक्टर थें जो डाक्टरी छोड़कर आइएएस बनें।पर क्यों ? अच्छी तनख्वाह होने के बावजूद। इसकी शुरुआत 2015 में टीना डाबी द्वारा परीक्षा में प्रथम स्थान प्राप्त करने से हुई थी।… pic.twitter.com/IE8Wo5bxnh
— UPSC के लुटेरे हैं सब दिल्ली में (@VivekGa54515036) July 26, 2024
“If everyone starts getting this inspiration, no doctor or engineer will be left,” one user commented on the X post.
But the digital fight of the UPSC whistleblower comes at a cost. Along with supportive messages, he’s received threats and defamation suits.
“I have more than 400 messages in my DMs, including legal notices from coaching institutes,” he said. “But I’m not afraid. They are scared because they know people are reading what I’m writing.”
He’s even been offered bribes. One coaching institute dangled Rs 2 lakh in front of him, he claimed, but he turned it down.
Also Read: Mukherjee Nagar wasn’t just the pin code of UPSC ambition. It was an emotion
Hit list
The X warrior has a long hit list, from ‘celebrity’ IAS officers like Tina Dabi to fraud-accused trainee Puja Khedkar. A special place is also reserved for top coaching entrepreneurs-cum-educators like Avadh Ojha and Drishti IAS’s Vikas Divyakirti.
Earlier this month, he shared a clip of Vikas Divyakirti appearing as a guest on a YouTube talk show—on ‘Gender, Sexuality, Toxicity, Loneliness’—and accused him of using sweet talk to promote his business while ignoring real student issues.
“Be it the Old Rajinder Nagar incident or room rent issue or the security problem of the aspirants, they did not support us,” read a part of this post.
गुरु जी पूरा शहद हैं,अब विक्टिम कार्ड खेलने में लगे हैं.निखिल तनेजा के साथ पॉडकास्ट कर रहें हैं टापिक इंटरेस्टिंग है Gender, Sexuality, Toxicity, Loneliness, कई ऐस्पिरेंट लाइब्रेरी में देखते हुए पाएं गये। लाखों में व्यू।
अच्छा इंसान।
हिंदी भाषी राज्य के बच्चे अच्छा इंसान पांच… pic.twitter.com/w2n8dYbFf4
— UPSC के लुटेरे हैं सब दिल्ली में (@VivekGa54515036) September 5, 2024
Another of his pet peeves is the advantage English-medium students have over Hindi-medium UPSC aspirants. He often champions these proverbial underdogs of the UPSC dream. In a recent post, he shared data from the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) showing the declining success rate of Hindi-medium candidates.
“The success rate of Hindi medium students in the 2015 and 2016 exams was around 4-5 percent, but in the 2017 and 2018 exams this figure again reached between 2-3 percent,” read this post.
हिंदी मीडियम में यूपीएससी परीक्षा देने वालों की संख्या का अंदाज़ा यूपीएससी की वार्षिक रिपोर्ट और लाल बहादुर शास्त्री नेशनल एकेडमी ऑफ़ एडमिनिस्ट्रेशन (LBSNAA) के आंकड़ों से मिलता है."
फिलहाल लबासना ने अपने annual report में कुछ सालों से आंकड़ा देने में लापरवाही की है पर बहुत जल्द… pic.twitter.com/Yl1Yh34I9b
— UPSC के लुटेरे हैं सब दिल्ली में (@VivekGa54515036) June 10, 2024
The whistleblower’s charges have elicited different reactions. Some praise his account as an eye-opener, while others call him a troll. But his goal is clear— exposing the relentless, exploitative churn of UPSC prep, and also advising students to get off the prelims-mains-rinse-repeat cycle at the right time.
“This whole industry profits off aspirants’ dreams and gives them false hope,” he told ThePrint. “If you can’t crack it in three years, you should quit. But nobody tells you that. People waste five or more years of their youth.”
Mukherjee Nagar is packed with students from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, but the success rate is dismal. The aggressive coaching ads and motivational videos obscure these harsh facts.
The UPSC whistleblower often backs his opinions with facts. He compiles, analyses, and shares data to expose the flaws and gaps in the UPSC selection ecosystem—especially to show how the balance is tilted in favour of certain regions and backgrounds.
“Let us learn about the UPSC Hindi medium result from Bihar and UP in CSE 2023— 1 person from Bihar and 12 people from Uttar Pradesh were selected,” said one post.
आइए जानते हैं CSE 2023 में यूपीएससी हिंदी माध्यम का रिजल्ट बिहार और यूपी से कैसा रहा !!
वैसे बता दूं तो बिहार से 1 और उत्तर प्रदेश से 12 लोगों का चयन हुआ।
आइए सभी का बैकग्राउंड जानते हैं
बिहार
1- मोहम्मद शहंशाह सिद्धकी रैंक -762 (बीटेक होल्डर)
उत्तर प्रदेश
1- अर्पित कुमार…
— UPSC के लुटेरे हैं सब दिल्ली में (@VivekGa54515036) June 3, 2024
He also told ThePrint that students from state universities are increasingly being left out of civil services selections, while those from elite institutions make the cut.
“Coaching institutes are fooling poor aspirants who come from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh by showing that they can become IAS and IPS officers but if you see the data, you will realise that most selected candidates come from JNU, DU, and IITs,” he said.
‘Mental stress’
With his social media activism, the whistleblower has stirred up serious conversations among UPSC institute owners, teachers, and aspirants. Each post is widely discussed and shared. Often, he’s pointing out things everyone knows but nobody says aloud. Or adding fact-based arguments to ground realities experienced by many. He’s seen as a truth-teller and disruptor in a system that few other insiders have dared to challenge publicly.
Even students who are neck-deep in preparation have developed a grudging admiration for him, although they baulk when he criticises their favourite teachers.
“What he said about Vikas Divyakirti sir was not right, he is a very great person,” said Vibhav Kumar, an aspirant in Mukherjee Nagar, referring to a Teacher’s Day post in which the anonymous whistleblower mocked “so-called You-Tube teachers” Divyakirti and Ojha for “talking nonsense” and “exaggerating their results”.
Yet, Kumar still follows the account closely. “The things he says about the coaching institutes and selected officers are something we want to know. It is new information,” he said.
However, some in the UPSC coaching community view this activism more as a form of venting than meaningful change. In a way, he’s becoming part of the same ecosystem by acting as a ‘negative’ influencer.
“The issues he raises are important but I wouldn’t call it activism. I think it’s bitter activism—the kind that arises from frustration, anger, and disillusionment,” said a UPSC teacher, requesting anonymity.
The teacher acknowledged that many aspirants squander years on their UPSC quest, but argued that all blame doesn’t lie with coaching institutes.
“The coaching institutes are not doing anything illegal. They are just teaching. They just don’t share about those 99 per cent of students who don’t get selected,” he said.
Coaching institutes, meanwhile, are increasingly concerned that the whistleblower account may be politically motivated or run by a disgruntled teacher or employee.
“It is not something we worry about since it’s just a Twitter (X) account, but, yes, we don’t want any bad things being written about us,” said a senior member of a leading coaching institute. “We haven’t taken any action so far, but there is curiosity to know who the person is behind it.”
But the young man said that he has received several defamation notices from coaching institutes, as well as “warnings” to stop posting about them on social media.
“I have answered a few notices. In some, there’s only a caution. I also receive threats regularly, which gives me a lot of mental stress,” he said.
Also Read: Broke, burnt-out & now bereaving—the crushing cost of UPSC aspirations
Aspiration to anger
This 25-year-old wasn’t always so fearless. Like countless other UPSC aspirants, he came to Delhi with a laser focus on becoming an IAS officer. But failing to crack the civil services exam thrice left him feeling cheated and trapped, he said. The juxtaposition of his and his friends’ repeated failures against the coaching institutes’ tall promises morphed his ambition into anger.
Now, he wants to give others a reality check. When he visits his hometown in Jharkhand, he advises his extended family to push their children to learn English before they start fantasising about the future.
“English is very important. This is what I have learned from my journey. I tell everyone this, from young kids in my family to other aspirants. I asked my sister to change her kids’ school so they can learn better English,” he said.
After multiple tries at UPSC and other state public service exams, he is fed up. He made it to two interviews for the Bihar Public Service Examination, but couldn’t clear them, and is now finishing his final attempt. After this, he has vowed to step away from the UPSC grind for good. But with all the years he lost to this predatory ecosystem, the coaching institute ads and motivational videos infuriate him.
“Whenever all this becomes unbearable, I either hit the gym or go to X to write about student issues to make myself feel better,” he said.
Because aspirants often get tunnel vision, he wants the government to step in with stricter guidelines. He argues the age limit should be reduced from 32 to 26, and the number of attempts should be further capped. Once someone enters this preparation cycle, he says, it’s hard to escape, and many end up sacrificing the best years of their lives.
“It would be a very good decision if the government gave only three attempts for UPSC (instead of the current 6). If you can’t do it in three attempts, then you should leave this journey. But nobody tells you this. Because if they do, their businesses won’t bring profit,” he said.
The Mukherjee Nagar whistleblower has seen many aspirants walk away dejected after years of failed attempts, only to join the same coaching industry to make a living. But he insists that’s not for him.
“I won’t do it. In a few months, I will leave Delhi and this cruel cycle. The coaching industry fools poor students whose parents sell their land to send them here. I will never do that,” he said.
Coming from a middle-class family, with a father who has a government job and four siblings, he entered the UPSC journey with a “five-year plan”. But disillusionment set in well before that.
“Motivation is parroted. In the beginning, it is like that. It takes two attempts to understand the reality. That is when clarity comes,” he said.
Though he’s ready to leave the cycle behind, his passion for helping other Hindi-medium students remains. He has no intention to stop his digital battle to make students aware and alert. All he needs is an internet connection, a smartphone, and his voice to keep exposing the system and the “reality of the cruel world”.
“This is only an X page and it can be blocked anytime. But until it is going fine, I am going to keep writing about this,” he said.
Still, he’s exploring the option of alternative social media platforms for safety and reach, just in case something happens to his X account. Making videos is a possibility, but he’s figuring out how to ensure his anonymity.
“I might go to YouTube but that will also require some safety measures,” he said, adding that masking his face or using voice-altering software are options he’s considering.
He wants to keep his identity hidden—and continue dropping truth bombs on the brutal world of UPSC aspirants.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)