"Lowest score since 1975": P Chidambaram flags India's 106 rank on Electoral Democracy Index

"Lowest score since 1975": P Chidambaram flags India's 106 rank on Electoral Democracy Index

Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP P Chidambaram on Tuesday flagged India's 106th rank among 179 countries on the Electoral Democracy Index by V-Dem, which he said was the lowest index score since 1975.

Congress has regularly cornered the government over the issue, with the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, claiming "vote chori" on several occasions. V-Dem gave India a score of 0.38 for the year 2025 on the Electoral Democracy Index, ranking the nation 106th. On the Liberal Democracy Index, India ranked 105th with a score of 0.26.

V-Dem uses Population-Weighted Measures showing how much democracy (statistically) the average global citizen enjoys. It uses country averages to give the same weight to advances in small countries like the Seychelles or Timor-Leste as in India or the United States. The institute has put India under the electoral autocracy category.

In South and Central Asia, the report said that only 2 per cent of people enjoy electoral democracy - in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and a negligibly small proportion resides in the three "grey zone" democracies - Bhutan, Mongolia, and the Maldives. It put India under the electoral autocracy category alongside Kazakhstan and Pakistan, while classifying Afghanistan and Turkmenistan as closed autocracies. In India, V-Dem argues for a slow autocratization since 2009 and claims a "systematic dismantling of democratic institutions." It highlighted deteriorations in freedom of expression and independence of the media, harassment of journalists critical of the government, and attacks on civil society and the opposition as the reasons behind the decline.

The V-Dem Institute is led by Associate Professor Steven Wilson and is based at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. (ANI)

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