BJP MP accuses Google of violating India's mapping laws

BJP MP Tarun Vijay has levelled a slew of allegations against Google India. Vijay has accused the search giant of violating India's mapping laws by "showing vital military installations with annotations". He has asked the government to work towards accessing the data with the company.

He said the recce of any location was crucial to preparing a military or terrorist action. Vijay added that Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley had carried out a recce before the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. In a statement, he said, "By marking the exact military installations and objects pointedly, Google is facilitating, unintentionally, a digital recce to any potential enemy group."

Facing the heat..

Reports quoted him further as saying, "The glaring violation of the Google against the constitution and the law is that it showed vital military installations with annotations like depicting the core of our nuclear plant Apsara reactor on the satellite imagery, blast pens inside the Hindon defence air base, ammunition depots, marking of hangers meant for specific fighter jets as well as those jets visible outside in the high resolution images, warships in naval dockyards etc,".

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Roughly a month ago, in a response to the Survey of India's allegations of its Mapathon contest being against India's cartographical laws, Google stated that the contest was in line with all the country's laws.

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