In a viral video, Congress loyalist Rajdeep Sardesai can be seen hosting his Prime Time show on India Today wherein a distorted map of India is on display. Just 3 seconds into the video, a graphical representation of the Indian map without the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), an integral part of India, pops up on the right side of the screen.
Moreover, the map of Pakistan is shown by including the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This is exactly the same way that the government of Pakistan represents its official map.
Archbishop @aroonpurie‘s channel showed POK in Pakistan on a map shown during Congress IT cell member @sardesairajdeep‘s show
— iMac_too (@iMac_too) April 26, 2020
Hope Home Minister @AmitShah takes note of it pic.twitter.com/B0MPmu6Zja
A closer look into the visible differences between the various maps of Pakistan affirms that fact that India Today included the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir within Pakistan.
In 2016, a new law under the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill was proposed by the Central Government wherein depiction of Indian map without POK or Arunachal Pradesh could lead to 7-year jail term along with a penalty of ₹100 crores. Under 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, such websites could be blocked by the Government of India.
Telangana Minister fact-checks India Today
India Today has been infamous for propagating distorted facts and misinformation. Earlier, the managing editor of the channel, Rahul Kanwal, had put up an infographic that listed out the number of PPEs available in coronavirus designated hospitals in India’s 12 most affected states. According to Kanwal, Maharashtra had the maximum number of PPEs at 1,22,133. The lowest, according to him, was Telangana with 3,132 PPEs.
Reacting on the same, Telangana minister KTR slammed India Today and Rahul Kanwal for their inaccurate reporting. In a tweet, KTR asked Rahul Kanwal not to publish ‘nonsense and confusing data’ in these troubling times if he did not have accurate details. KT Ramarao asked whether India Today and Rahul Kanwal will apologise if he proved that Telangana had 100 times more PPEs than what the data projected by India Today revealed. “Sorry but this is disgraceful journalism Rajdeep Sardesai,” tweeted the Telangana minister.
