India's NSA Ajit Doval walks out of SCO meet after Pakistan violates charter by projecting fictitious map

Pakistan on Tuesday violated Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO) charter and put up a map showing Kashmir as its part at the SCO National Security Advisors (NSA) meet. 

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While India strongly objected to it, and Russia which is the Chair of the SCO for this year tried to persuade Pakistan but Islamabad remained unfazed and continued with the map as the background. 

India's NSA Ajit Doval took a strong exception to it and left the SCO NSA virtual meet after due "consultation" from host Russia.

Ministry of external affairs in a strong response said,"Pakistani NSA deliberately projected a fictitious map that Pakistan has recently been propagating" which was in "blatant disregard to the advisory by the host against it and in violation of the norms of the meeting". 

Explaining, "After consultation with the host, the Indian side left the meeting in protest at that juncture."

Government sources told WION that "Pakistan’s use of a fictitious map as a backdrop" which depicted "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."

SCO Charter, article 2 states,"SCO member States shall adhere to the following principles.." which includes "mutual respect of sovereignty... territorial integrity of States and inviolability of State border".

In fact, Secretary of the National Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev told Pakistani side it does not support what Islamabad has done and hoped Pakistan’s "provocative act will not affect India’s participation in SCO and definitely not cast any shadow on Patrushev’s warm personal relationship for NSA for whom he has the highest regard", sources elaborated. 

The map was the same one issued by Pakistan on the first anniversary of the removal of special status for the erstwhile state of J&K.

India, Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are part of the SCO grouping. Both defence minister Rajnath Singh and external affairs minister S Jaishankar visited Moscow in last two weeks to participate in SCO defence and FMs meet.