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The Shiv Sena on Friday attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government for the drop in India’s rank in the democracy index. In an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana, the party alleged there had been attempts to muzzle dissenting voices and this is one of the key reasons for India slipping in the 2019 Democracy Index’s global ranking.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) released a report earlier this week on the World Democracy Index where India slipped 10 places to 51st position in the 2019 Democracy Index’s global rankings. The report, which ranked over 160 countries, cited “erosion of civil liberties” in the country as the primary cause of the slip in rank.
“Now there is a slide in [India’s] global democracy index ranking,” the editorial said. It added, “This means how India has slipped on the economic standards on a global level, the standard of democracy has also gone down.”
Citing issues like scrapping of Article 370, that provided special status to Jammu and Kashmir, new citizenship law CAA and the proposed NRC, measures which have witnessed protests, the paper said the country had witnessed a churning in the last one year.
“In the last one year, the country has witnessed churning over scrapping of Article 370, CAA, NRC, etc. There have been public protests, students protests. JNU-type attacks are used to muzzle the dissenting voices.This is the reason India slipped to 51st position in the Democracy Index,” the editorial said.
The editorial asked if the ruling party at the Centre and its supporters would accept the current situation.
“Even if the government rejects the [EIU] report, does the ruling party have an answer as to why the country was witnessing a slide, from economic field to democracy?” the Sena asked the BJP.
The Sena and the BJP, which had been alliance partners for decades, had broken up last year after the Maharashtra elections. Uddhav Thackeray took over as the chief minister after a brief spell of central rule in the state with two unlikely partners, Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
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