A Sweden-based institute has classified India as an ‘electoral autocracy’.
The V-Dem Institute, an independent research institute based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, has been publishing data-heavy worldwide democracy reports since 2017.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wrote on Twitter, India is no longer a democratic country, tagging a news report citing Sweden’s V-Dem Institute’s democracy report that has downgraded India’s classification of the world’s largest democracy to electoral autocracy.
The V-Dem report said that after Modi became the prime minister, censorship efforts became routine and were no longer related to only government matters. The government has constrained civil society and gone against the Constitution’s commitment to secularism. It added that the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, amended in 2019, was being used to harass, intimidate, and imprison political opponents as well as people protesting against the government policies.
Last week, India’s status on Freedom House’s report on political rights and civil liberties was lowered to partly free in the United States government-funded non-governmental organization’s annual Freedom in the World rankings. In 2020, the organization’s report ranked India as free.
The report read that political rights and civil liberties in the country have deteriorated since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, with increased pressure on human rights organizations, rising intimidation of academics and journalists, and a spate of bigoted attacks, including lynchings, aimed at Muslims.
The decline only accelerated after Modi’s reelection in 2019, it added.
However, the center said the report was misleading, incorrect, and misplaced.