Arunachal Pradesh, Kashmir not mapped by Bihar map, official suspended

Patna: In a damage control exercise, the urban development department of Bihar has suspended an employee and served a show-cause notice on an engineer in connection with a row over a map of India on its website showing Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh not as parts of the country.

"We have taken the matter seriously and suspended an assistant Ashutosh Kumar and served show-cause notice on an engineer," the Urban Development Secretary B Rajendra said today.

In the recently-released Patna’s Master Plan 2031, the administration released the map, which was not of Bihar but of India, and was either incomplete or truncated. The map is without Arunanchal Pradesh and parts of Jammu and Kashmir are missing.

This has made the political class angry. Politicians, cutting across party lines, are demanding action against the officials and those involved in preparing the plan and the map.

BJP leader and Union minister Ram Kripal Yadav has said, “This is a classic case of carelessness. Those responsible must be punished.”

RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said, “This is a serious matter. Why didn’t the officials check the fact before the map was drawn and released? They must be identified and punished.” Urban development minister Samrat Choudhary said “There should have been Bihar’s map instead of the country’s. Action would follow.”