India is no longer a democratic country: Rahul Gandhi attacks Modi government [details]

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday attacked the Modi government and said that India is no longer a democratic country. Rahul Gandhi has cited the Democracy Report of Sweden's V-Dem Institute. This report said that India has changed from the world's largest democracy to a country with electoral dictators.

The report places India with Hungary and Turkey and states that many aspects of democracy in the country have been banned. This report of V-Dem Institute has come at a time when the Modi government has already been at the receiving end after numerous students, activists and other dissenting voices are being targeted. The dissenting voices are being slapped draconian UAPA and other harsh laws including National Security Act.

The V-Dem Institute has said in its report that the voice of the media in the country is being crushed and the law of defamation and treason is being misused. The report highlighted, "India has become a dictator country like Pakistan in terms of sentencing and its situation has become worse than neighboring countries Bangladesh and Nepal."

Freedom House Report

It is to be noted that a few days ago, Freedom House, an NGO of the US government, had said a similar thing in its latest report. The report, titled "Freedom in the World 2021: Democracy under Siege", stated that India seems to have abandoned its ability to lead as a global democratic leader.

Moreover, the NGO had placed India in the list of 'free' countries in 2018, 2019, and 2020, even though India had fallen from 77 to 71 points, but in the latest report, India could only score 67 out of 100 and it was called 'Partly Free'.

The NGO had said in the report that since 2014 the situation in India has deteriorated in terms of political rights and people's freedom. This has been attributed to the increasing pressure on human rights organizations, threats to intelligentsia and journalists, and the increasing incidents of religious fundamentalist attacks on Muslims. Apart from this, targeting the protesters and criticizing journalists opposing the CAA has also been cited as the reason.