India no longer a democratic country, says Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday courted a fresh controversy by saying that India is no longer a "democratic country" while quoting media reports on Swedish Institute's democracy report that downgraded India.

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", Rahul Gandhi said in his tweet that India is no longer a democratic country.

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.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, "Political judgement of freedom house are as inaccurate and distorted as their maps, example on the Covid situation there is widespread appreciation of the response of our recovery rate and low fatality rate."

The Ministry of External Affairs in its response further said, "India has robust institutions and well established democratic practices, we do not need sermons especially from those who don't even get their basics right."