India formally named 28 places and geographical features in Ladakh on official Survey of India maps, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Friday. The move follows a similar exercise in Arunachal Pradesh. Officials said the step aims at facilitating the accurate recognition of these locations and improving public awareness.
India has formally named and mapped 28 places and geographical features in Ladakh on official Survey of India maps, following a similar exercise in Arunachal Pradesh. The move comes amid China's practice of assigning Chinese names to locations in Indian territories.
The Centre has formally identified and mapped 28 places and geographical features in Ladakh on the official Survey of India map, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said on Friday.
The MHA said the exercise was carried out in consultation with the Union Territory administration and is aimed at facilitating the "accurate recognition" of these locations and improving public awareness about them.
The move comes after the Centre standardised the names of 27 places and geographical features in Arunachal Pradesh in August this year.
The list also includes Karun Pir, Drak Karpo and Jolmori mountains; Chapchingal Pass and Shachmirk Pass; Parpik and Skamri glaciers; and Shkorga Valley.
Other identified geographical features include Brangsa, Kuksel, Dehra Compass, Gogra, Kumarayana Point, Panglung and Shamal Lungpa.
Guru Rinpoche Lake, Yangpa River and Hot Spring are also among the 28 features.
The government said these names will now be represented on the Survey of India's official map of Ladakh, and the objective was to facilitate accurate recognition and greater public awareness.
Since 2017, Beijing has issued multiple lists of such names -- beginning with six places, followed by 15 in 2021, further batches in 2023 and 2024, and another 23 locations in April 2026.
The successive rounds have taken the total number of renamed locations to more than 80, according to Modern Diplomacy.
Analysts cited by Firstpost have described the practice as a form of "cartographic aggression" and psychological warfare, arguing that the renaming is intended to reinforce Chinese territorial claims and influence how the disputed areas are represented on maps.
Beijing refers to Arunachal Pradesh as "Zangnan", or southern Tibet, and has repeatedly announced new Chinese names for places there. Notably, Tibet was occupied by China in 1950 by the use of brutal force, displacing thousands of native people towards India and Nepal.
India has rejected these moves, making clear that China cannot change the status of Indian territory simply by assigning it a different name.
The Ladakh exercise follows the Centre's August decision to standardise 27 places and geographical features in Arunachal Pradesh on Survey of India maps.
The Arunachal list included places such as Thag La, Dzo La, Riza La, Pukur La and Jaswant Garh, among others.
India has consistently rejected the practice, saying that changing place names does not change their status or India's sovereignty over them.