In a recent assault directed on the Prime Minister, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday mentioned Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi additionally used to win elections whereas declaring at India’s dwindling standing in international democracy metrics.
“Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi used to have elections. They used to win them. It wasn’t like they weren’t voting but there was no institutional framework to protect that vote,” the Gandhi mentioned throughout an internet interplay with Brown University professor Ashutosh Varshney, school and college students.
The assertion come amid his claims that India is “no longer” a democratic nation by which Gandhi quoted Swedish Institute’s democracy report that downgraded India.
“India is no longer a democratic country,” he tweeted whereas tagging a information report citing the Sweden’s V-Dem Institute’s democracy report that has downgraded India from “world’s largest democracy” to “electoral democracy”.
While elevating issues on the nation’s democracy’s standing on Tuesday, Gandhi mentioned, “An election will not be merely individuals going and urgent a button on a voting machine. An election is about narrative. An election is about establishments that ensure that the framework within the nation is working correctly, an election is in regards to the judiciary being honest and a debate happening in parliament. So you want these issues for a vote to depend.”
Rahul Gandhi added, “Bharatiya Janata Party MPs in Parliament inform me that they can not have an open dialogue. They say they’re advised what to say.”
Infact, the Swedish report was followed by another global report by the US government-funded NGO Freedom House that downgraded India’s status from “free” to “partly free” and claimed that “political rights and civil liberties have eroded in India since Narendra Modi turned prime minister in 2014”.
Meanwhile, the government has strongly disproved the Freedom House report and called it “deceptive, incorrect and misplaced” while asserting that the country has well established democratic practices.
