Farmville users want to be able to fly the Indian flag online

More than 20,000 people have called for India's national flag to be added to a popular web game which allows users to develop and manage a farm online.

Farmville is the most popular application on the social networking site Facebook.

Players are able to personalise their farms and mark their location by adding flags to their territory.

At the moment, players from just a few countries, including the UK and US, can mark territory with a national flag.

Players have lobbied San Franciso-based developers Zynga saying many of the game's 56 million fans are Indian.

By Friday, at least 20,300 supporters added their name to a petition asking Zynga to add the tricolour flag.

Discussions

More than three million Facebook users live in India and there are many more Farmville players of Indian-origin who have backed the cause.

The topic was also discussed on blogs and forums.

One commentator said users would even be prepared to pay to be able to use their flag, while on a Zynga community forum, another said a large number of Indians played the game and were disappointed by the missing flag.

The campaign has inspired other players to request that their flags are also added.

Ankush Deshpande is one of those co-ordinating efforts online to persuade Zynga to add the Indian flag.

He said Farmville's developers had "insulted" India by ignoring the demand.

Since the game launched in June, an average of more than one million new daily active users a week have joined Farmville.