India has slipped in the ranking of political rights and civil liberties, as per the report by Freedom House. The report further states that the country had departed alarmingly from “democratic norms” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
The pro-democracy nonprofit added that among the 25 largest democracies by population, India had suffered the greatest decline in its political rights and civil liberties score. The report classified internet freedom in India as being ‘partial’.
In recent times, following the abrogation of Article 370, Kashmir had been placed under a lock-down of sorts. Soon after the law was scrapped, the State was divided into two union territories. To avoid incidents of violence, the Centre placed stringent curbs on the movement of people and on communication systems.
According to the Freedom House report, in the last year, Kashmir saw “one of the five largest single-year score declines of the past 10 years in Freedom in the World”.
“The sweeping reorganization, which opponents criticized as unconstitutional, was accompanied by a massive deployment of troops and arbitrary arrests of hundreds of Kashmiri leaders and activists,” the article added.
Accusing the BJP of “distancing itself from the country’s founding commitment to pluralism and individual rights” the Freedom House report suggested that India is now moving towards the lower human rights standards set by some of her neighbours.
Speaking about the NRC the report said that it followed a “deeply flawed process” and rendered many stateless. It added that while the NRC was “widely understood as an effort to exclude Muslims” it ended up excluding a significant number of Hindus.-Inputs from Free Press Journal
