The ministry of external affairs issued a clarification on Sunday regarding the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh after backing the African Union’s resolution to “rebalance” the world map.
In a statement, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that India voted in favour of the map, explaining that the vote stressed“the underlying principle of promoting equal – area cartographic representation.”
“We also highlighted that the resolution does not constitute endorsement of any specific map, projection or depiction of national boundaries,” the MEA added further.
The United Nations General Assembly voted on Friday to back a resolution spearheaded by several African countries to adopt a map that makes their continent bigger while shrinking North America and Europe.
The resolution aimed at “a more accurate representation” of continental landmasses. The resolution was supported by 164 countries, while the United States voted against it, and six other states abstained.
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India warns against ‘incorrect depiction’
India has time and again been an ally for the African Union states, from ensuring its inclusion in the group of twenty (G20) to now backing the “equal earth” map at the United Nations.
However, New Delhi insisted that the equal earth map will not change the depiction of current national boundaries.
“India’s sovereign territory, including the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, must be depicted in accordance with India’s official map. Any inaccurate or misleading depiction is unacceptable. Our position on India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is clear, consistent and non-negotiable,” Jaiswal added in the statement.
What led to the call for a new map?
The Mercator map, which has been in common use since the 16th Century, has been criticised for showing Africa as being of similar size to Greenland, even though its mass is actually 14 times larger.
This map, first designed in 1569, was made to help European explorers navigate across the world. The distortion of the map is based on the fact that the surface of a globe cannot be represented on a two-dimensional chart.
In the Mercator map, the curvature of the Earth is accommodated for by making countries near the equator seem smaller than they are and countries near the poles appear larger.
In order to address this, an “equal earth” map was created in 2018 and in February 2026, all 54 nations in the African Union adopted the map due to its “accurate representation of all continents, especially Africa.”
The map was put before the United Nations by Togo, backed by African Union countries.
“Changing the map obviously doesn’t change the world. But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth,” Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told reporters before the vote on the map.
