WhatsApp deletes tweet with distorted map of India after warning by Union Minister

The Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, issued a warning to WhatsApp after the platform shared India's incorrect map in one of its tweets. The Meta-owned platform, while sharing details about its upcoming live stream for New Year, uploaded a video that excluded the regions of Jammu and Kashmir illegally occupied by Pakistan as well as some region claimed by China. 

"Dear WhatsApp- Rqst that u pls fix the India map error asap (sic)", the Minister warned the company while tagging WhatsApp in his tweet. "All platforms that do business in India and/or want to continue to do business in India, must use correct maps (sic)", he further wrote. 

After the Minister's warning over the incorrect Indian map, WhatsApp deleted its tweet. This comes just three days after MoS Chandrasekhar cautioned video calling company Zoom’s founder and chief executive officer Eric Yuan to use a correct Indian map. "You may want to make sure u use correct maps of the countries u do / want to do business in @ericsyuan (sic)", he tweeted. Yuan too deleted his tweet soon after. 

There have been several occassions when India's distorted map was shared online, primarily the J&K region on the Pakistani side and the Ladakh region near China. Another instance surfaced in 2021, when Twitter on its career page shared an incorrect map over illegally occupied territories by China and Pakistan. 

Earlier in October this year, Indian ed-tech platform Byju's also got into a controversy over its alleged study material which showed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as 'Azad Kashmir' with 'Aksai Chin' on the other side. This made the company issue a statement saying the image being circulated online is fake and is not its material.

"This is not part of any material that we have distributed. Our curriculum and all material created are strictly aligned to multiple accreditation boards at the national level and are created keeping in mind the highest standards. We will be reporting this to the concerned authorities for further investigation and action," the official statement read. "All our content is watermarked and additionally our logo usage is incorrect, we never use an underline below the logo," it said. Political parties such as the Telangana Rashtriya Samithi (TRS) and Congress recently came under fire for wrong maps.