CHENNAI: Close on the heels of a Chinese envoy’s ‘shut up’ remark over an incorrect Indian map recently, details have emerged that the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet, the world’s largest fleet command encompassing 100 million square miles, has distorted the Indian map on its website to show the Asian region to its visitors.On the website, (http://www.cpf.navy.mil/map/) Indian territories like Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh were shown to be a part of India’s neighbour, China.While India had objected to several such misrepresentations of its maps in the past through diplomatic channels and forced them to change the maps, analysts want the Ministry of External Affairs to strongly take up the issue with the US government.It may be noted that just a few days ago in New Delhi, a Chinese envoy yelled at a journalist when the scribe asked him about the distortion of an Indian map by a state-owned company that showed Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Jammu and Kashmir as part of China.The US Pacific Fleet encompasses 100 million square miles, more than half the earth’s surface, from the West Coast of the US into the Indian Ocean. It consists of approximately 180 ships, nearly 2,000 aircraft and 1,25,000 sailors, marines and civilians.The website has been accessed by hundreds of sailors and veterans on a daily basis, and presence of such distorted Indian map on the site could send a wrong signal to its visitors. Efforts to get reactions from the Fleet Commander, Admiral Patrick M Walsh, remained futile as emails went unanswered.
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