Randhir Jaiswal, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs clarified that India will not accept inaccurate and misleading depictions of its sovereign territory, according to a press release on Sunday.
This is in light of the country voting in favour of the United Nations General Assembly resolution “Correct the Map: Rebalancing Global Cartographic Representation and Promoting Equitable Representation of the World's Regions, Particularly Africa” on Sept 4 2026.
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"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," the release stated.
The release stated that purpose of the resolution is to encourage the use of equal-area map projections that preserve the relative sizes of continental landmasses.
"The resolution neither adopts nor authenticates any particular world map, nor does it address political cartography, including international boundaries, disputed territories or place names," it added.
The United States was the only country to vote against it, while 164 countries voted in favour. Meanwhile, Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine abstained.
India also delivered an explanation of vote, stressing the underlying principle of promoting equal-area cartographic representation.
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The move is largely aimed at addressing long-standing distortions in how the size of different parts of the world is represented on commonly used maps.
The debate centres on the Mercator projection, a mapping system developed in the 16th century and widely used for navigation, classrooms and other applications. While the Mercator projection is useful for preserving directions and angles, it increasingly distorts the size of landmasses as they move farther from the Equator. Countries and regions closer to the northern and southern extremes can therefore appear significantly larger than they are in reality.
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