NEW DELHI – Saudi Arabia has angered India after excluding Kashmir out of its map on its new currency notes.
The world map on the note’s background shows it as a separate country, including the part of the territory under illegal Indian rule. Kingdom issued a new 20 riyal note on October 24, front of the new issued note has a photo of King Salman and the logo for the Saudi G20 summit and world map on the back.
The new 20 riyal note was issued by Saudi Arabia to commemorate the kingdom’s presidency of the G20.
The map on #SaudiArabia ????????newly issued 20 Riyal banknote shows #Kashmir, #Jammu, and #Ladakh are not #Indian ????????territories. The banknote released to mark Saudi Arabia’s presidency of the #G20 grouping. pic.twitter.com/afKP8vo1Ai
— Shen Shiwei沈诗伟 (@shen_shiwei) October 30, 2020
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that India has conveyed its “serious concern to Saudi Arabia, through their ambassador in New Delhi and in Riyadh, for this misrepresentation of India’s external territorial boundaries on an official and legal banknote of Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudi side to take urgent corrective steps in this regard.”
The ministry said it had asked Saudi authorities to take “corrective steps”. Saudi authorities have yet to publicly respond.
The Indian government this week warned Twitter over geo-tagging data that showed the Ladakh region as belonging to China.
Earlier in 2015, New Delhi banned broadcaster Al-Jazeera after it published an Indian map that excluded Occupied Kashmir.
It has also regularly censored The Economist magazine for showing Occupied Kashmir as a disputed region
