National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval on Tuesday, 15 September, walked out of a virtual conference of national security advisers of member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) after Pakistani representative Moeed Yusuf presented a map that inaccurately showed the borders of the two countries.
The map was issued by Imran Khan’s government in August, and incorporated India’s two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh – and also Junagadh in its western state of Gujarat in Pakistan.
The SCO meeting was chaired by Russia.
The External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that “it was a blatant disregard to the advisory by the host against it and in violation of the norms of the meeting. After consultation with the host, the Indian side left the meeting in protest at that juncture.”
He further mentioned that “at the meeting of the national security advisers (NSAs) of member-states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), hosted by the chair of the SCO (Russia), the Pakistani NSA deliberately projected a fictitious map that Pakistan has recently been propagating.”
Srivastava also added, “As was to be expected, Pakistan then went on to present a misleading view of this meeting,” reported Hindustan Times.
India had reacted strongly against Pakistan and has described the move as an “exercise in political absurdity” with no legal validity.
Pakistan's use of a fictitious map as a backdrop for its representative depicting sovereign Indian territories as part of Pakistan is a blatant violation of the SCO Charter and against all its established norms of safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of SCO member states, reported news agency IANS.
Patrushev, who was chairing the meeting, asked Pakistani representative Moeed Yusuf to refrain from using the map as a background display but Islamabad rejected the objection and continued using the map for rest of the meeting, Deccan Herald reported.
The political map was released by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan during a meeting in Islamabad that was attended by his cabinet and senior officials, including his special assistant on national security affairs, Moeed Yusuf.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times and Deccan Herald and IANS)
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