Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday, March 11, claimed India was “no longer” a democratic country, quoting media reports on Swedish Institute’s democracy report that downgraded India. “India is no longer a democratic country,” he said on Twitter, tagging a news report citing Sweden’s V-Dem Institute’s democracy report that has downgraded India from ‘world’s largest democracy’ to ‘electoral democracy’.

This comes after another global report by a US government-funded NGO, Freedom House downgraded India’s status from “free” to “partly free” and claimed that “political rights and civil liberties have eroded in India since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014”.

The government has strongly rebutted the Freedom House report and called it “misleading, incorrect and misplaced”, while asserting that the country has well established democratic practices.

Gandhi has been attacking the government over the issue of freedom to speech and expression.            Source: PTI

Plea in SC seeks to restrain govt from deporting Rohingyas from Jammu

Days after authorities in Jammu detained Rohingya immigrants as part of the process to deport them, a plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions for their immediate release and to restrain the Centre from deporting them. Filed by Mohammad Salimullah, a Rohingya refugee, the plea is in the form of an intervention application in a matter already pending before the court.

The total estimated number of Rohingyas in Jammu is estimated to be more than 6,500. There are several petitions in SC demanding deportation of over 40,000 Rohingyas, who fled to India after violence in the Western Rakhine State of Myanmar and are settled in Jammu, Hyderabad, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-NCR and Rajasthan.