Arunachal Pradesh disappears from Xiaomi’s weather app

New Delhi: The Chinese multinational phone major Xiaomi was caught in a controversy on Sunday after the company’s smartphones in India failed to display Arunachal Pradesh in its weather app. The error sparked social media rumors about the company supporting the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda that Ladakh and AP aren’t recognized as part of India.

Several other cities and states were also disappeared from the app too, which the company later clarified to be a technical glitch. “We would like to clarify that the weather app on our devices uses data from multiple third-party data sources and we understand that for many locations, the weather-related data is not available on the current app. This is a technical error on our application,” the company had said in a statement.

Chinese companies have been facing a backlash ever since the global COVID-19 outbreak. The anti-China sentiments have been compounded in India, due to the border clashes between the two countries in Ladakh. India has responded by banning over 150 Chinese apps from operating in the country, a few from Xiaomi amongst them.