Amid ongoing farmers’ protests and December 8 ‘Bharat Bandh’, AajTak was found streaming wrong map of India on Reliance Jio’s OTT platform. Netizen Dipesh shared images of Reliance Jio’s Fibre TV with AajTak on the front page of the JioTV+ app. He had tagged the Home Minister’s office on Twitter and urged them to take strict action against responsible individuals.
https://twitter.com/DipsSip/status/1336214357072494592?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe map depicted in the images excludes major portion of union territories of Jammu and Kashmir as well as Ladakh from India.
To dig further on the issue, we checked other OTT platforms that live stream News Channels.
On Disney+Hostar, the map of India is depicted properly, though not to scale. So it seems only on Reliance Jio platform does AajTak depict the distorted map of India.
3-years in jail for showing wrong map of India
As per the law, anyone who publishes wrong map of India is subject to up three years in jail and/or fine. The law says, “Questioning the territoriar integrity or frontiers of India in a manner prejudicial to the interests of safety and securiety of India- (1) whoever by words either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representation or otherwise, questions the territorial integrity or frontiers of India in a manner which is, or is Likely to be, prejudiciar to t.e interests of the safety or security of India, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”
OpIndia has reached out to Reliance Jio as well as AajTak regarding the wrong map displayed on Jio. We shall update the report once we hear back from them.