NEW DELHI: An Indian university has been asked to vacate its stall at the cou­ntry’s flagship artificial intelligence summit after a staff member was caught presenting a commercially available robotic dog made in China as its own creation, government sources said.

“You need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the Centre of Excellence at Galgotias University,” Neha Singh, a professor of communications, told state-run broadcaster DD News this week in remarks that have since gone viral. “As you can see, it can take all shapes and sizes… it’s quite naughty also,” she said.

But social media users quickly identified the robot as the Unitree Go2, sold by China’s Unitree Robotics for about $2,800 and widely used in research and education globally.

Told to vacate stall at AI summit in New Delhi

The episode has drawn sharp criticism and has cast an uncomfortable spot­light on India’s AI ambitions.

The embarrassment was amplified by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who shared the video clip on his off­icial social media acc­ount before the backlash. The post was later deleted.

The stall remained open to visitors as of Wednesday morning with university officials fielding questions from media about accusations of plagiarism and misrepresentation.

Galgotias has yet to receive any communication about being kicked out from the event, a representative at the booth said.

India’s Congress opposition party used the incident to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is hosting nearly 20 world leaders and dozens more national delegations at the five-day summit.

“The Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally, with regard to AI. In the ongoing AI summit, Chinese robots are being displayed as our own,” the party wrote in a post on X.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2026