Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said India was no longer a democratic country as he shared news reports of a Swedish institute's study which has downgraded India's democracy status.
The V-Dem Institute's democracy report has downgraded India from 'world's largest democracy' to 'electoral democracy'. Tagging a media report on it, Rahul tweeted: "India is no longer a democratic country".
The V-Dem study came days after a US NGO, Freedom House, released a report, claiming sustained erosion of civil liberties in India. The report had even downgraded India's status to a "partly free" country, drawing sharp reaction from the Centre.
The Freedom House report had claimed that though the private media are vigorous and diverse, and investigations and scrutiny of politicians do occur, attacks on press freedom have escalated dramatically under the Narendra Modi government, and reporting has become significantly less ambitious in recent years. Authorities have used security, defamation, sedition, and hate speech laws, as well as contempt-of-court charges, to quiet critical voices in the media, the democracy watchdog had said.
In its strong reaction, India called the report "misleading, incorrect and misplaced", and asserted that the country has well established democratic practices.
While the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting(MIB) stressed that the country treats all citizens equally without discrimination and that discussion, debate and dissent are part of Indian democracy, the Ministry of External Affairs(MEA) said India does not need "sermons", especially from those who cannot get their basics right.
