Delhi HC Suggests The Central Government To Stop Google From Uploading Indian Maps

On July 25, the High Court of Delhi suddenly sent a strange directive to the central government. In this directive, it required the central government to investigate whether to allow the Mountain View-headquartered tech giant Google continue to upload India’s maps on all of its platforms. The reason behind it is due to their concerns about a national security threat Google may pose.

A bench including Justice C Hari Shankar and Chief Justice DN Patel was the one to issue the directive after they heard a plea from advocate Kisalaya Shukla. According to the advocate, it makes nonsense that Indians are restricted from accessing defence establishments while they have no difficulties in looking for them via Maps, as well as via satellite images from Google Earth.

Shukla also said that, in fact, only the government of India has the right to provide its outside parties with detailed Indian maps. In addition, he hoped that the Delhi HC would direct the Centre to soon bring its new Indian regional navigation satellite system called NAVIC (The Navigation with Indian Constellation) to all users. With this system, civilians don’t need to use the private entities’ services.

And hence, the Delhi HC has just asked the Central government to consider whether to restrain the US tech company from uploading maps of India on its platform or not. Besides, they will probably issue a directive to Google according to the current laws of India.

There are lots of reasons for the Delhi HC’s directive. The major one is due to its concerns about both Google Earth and Google Maps that may allow hostile countries to access top-secret defence establishments in India. PTI reported Shukla also pointed out that the terrorists who took part in the Mumbai attacks in 2008 made use of images from Google to track this city before their attack.