Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister of state for electronics and information technology cautioned Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom which is a video calling company. The reason behind this was that Yuan used a map of India on Twitter which was wrong. The tweet showed a distorted map of India wherein the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir was not represented. Chandrasekhar drew sharp criticism after seeing it which was followed by others who pointed out that it is unlawful.
The minister tagged Yuan and said that one should be more careful when using maps. He wrote, “you may want to make sure u use correct maps of the countries u do/want to do business in @ericsyuan.” The tweet was later deleted by the Zoom CEO after the misconduct was pointed out by the minister. Yuan also thanked Chandrasekhar as he helped him know the error and wrote, “I recently took down a tweet that many of you had pointed out had issues with the map. Thank you for the feedback!!” To this the minister replied with the joined hands emoji.
However, this is not the first time that a company used an incorrect map of India. In the past, there have been several cases wherein people have used maps that have misrepresented the states and union territories of India. In the year 2021, the microblogging platform Twitter landed into trouble when its career page displayed a distorted map of India. It showed Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir outside the borders of India. The company later submitted a written apology to a Joint parliamentary Committee.
It is important to note that this is not just about the sentiments of nationalism and patriotism but using the wrong map of India is a punishable offense. People who do so are liable to fine and even jail terms under certain circumstances.
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