Pakistan's Foreign Office said on Monday that it rejected assertions by India's Ministry of External Affairs concerning the status of Jammu and Kashmir, maintaining that the territory remains disputed under the United Nations framework. Spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan said official UN maps continued to reflect that disputed status and argued that India's territorial claims did not alter it.
The response followed India's clarification that its vote for the General Assembly resolution on fairer cartographic representation did not amount to endorsement of any particular map or projection. New Delhi also said its position on sovereignty and territorial integrity was unchanged and that any map depicting its territory inaccurately would be unacceptable.
India regards the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as integral parts of the country and says they must be shown accordingly on maps reflecting its official position. Pakistan disputes that claim, while the UN continues to treat the status of Jammu and Kashmir as subject to the relevant Security Council resolutions. The competing positions remain unchanged by the cartographic resolution adopted last week.
The General Assembly approved the resolution, titled "Correct the Map: Rebalancing Global Cartographic Representation and Promoting Equitable Representation of the World's Regions, Particularly Africa", on September 4. It received 164 votes in favour, six abstentions and one vote against, cast by the United States.
The measure seeks wider use of equal-area map projections that preserve the relative size of continental landmasses more accurately than the Mercator projection, which remains common in education, media and digital services. The resolution was advanced by Togo on behalf of the African Group and reflects a campaign to address the visual distortion that makes landmasses farther from the equator appear disproportionately large.
India's Permanent Mission to the UN supported the objective but entered a detailed explanation of its vote. First Secretary Raghoo Puri said the resolution should be understood as encouraging broader consideration of equal-area projections, rather than endorsing the Equal Earth projection or any other specific map.
Puri said different projections serve different cartographic purposes and argued that no single method is suitable for every application. India therefore supported language encouraging greater accuracy while allowing governments, institutions and cartographers to choose the projection best suited to their needs.
That interpretation broadly matched assurances given during the General Assembly debate that the resolution concerns the proportional representation of continental land areas rather than borders or territorial claims. Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told the Assembly that the proposal did not address the delimitation, status or recognition of borders and was intended for cartographic, scientific and educational purposes.
The European Union and its member states also placed on record that the resolution neither addressed nor affected sovereignty, territorial status, delimitation or internationally recognised borders. Their statement said the measure did not imply recognition of claims concerning disputed territories and did not endorse any specific website or map.
Pakistan's statement focused instead on India's subsequent insistence that Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh be depicted according to New Delhi's official map. Islamabad said the Kashmir dispute remained on the Security Council's agenda and repeated its position that its final disposition should be determined in accordance with relevant UN resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
India rejects Pakistan's interpretation of the dispute and maintains that questions concerning Jammu and Kashmir are matters involving its sovereignty. The two countries have long advanced incompatible legal and political positions over the territory, parts of which are administered by India and Pakistan, while China controls territory claimed by India in the wider region.