Leh a part of China? Centre's scathing letter to Twitter CEO on geo-tagging error

The Centre has on Thursday written to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey conveying "strong disapproval" over the micro-blogging platform's location settings that showed Leh in China. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), asking Dorsey to "respect sensitivities", showed disapproval of the "misrepresentation of map of India".

According to a report by Yourstory, Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY, in his letter reminded the CEO that Leh is the headquarter of Ladakh, and that both Ladakh as well as J&K are "integral and inalienable parts of India, governed by the Constitution of India."

MeitY Secretary Ajay Sawhney also urged Twitter to respect the sensitivities of Indian citizens, and said that any attempt to disrespect the country's sovereignty is "unlawful and unacceptable".

Twitter's actions not only bring disrepute to the social media platform, but also "raises questions about its neutrality and fairness", the report quoted from the letter. 

Twitter, in its response, has informed that the issue has been resolved. "We became aware of this technical issue on Sunday, and understand and respect the sensitivities around it. Teams have worked swiftly to investigate and resolve the concerned geotag issue. Twitter remains committed to working with the government of India," a Twitter spokesperson said in responses.

The controversial geo-tagging came to light after a journalist, Nitin Gokhale, who went live from Leh’s popular war memorial, Hall of Fame, on Sunday noticed "Jammu & Kashmir, Peoples Republic of China". 

Following Gokhale’s tweets, other users also tried to go live on the microblogging platform by tagging their location as Leh, and Twitter showed it to be a part of China’s territory.