Prime Minister Modi Is Disarming the Opposition Ahead of India's National Elections

His efforts to defund, censor, and harass his critics has created an uneven playing field

Weeks before the official launch of India’s 2024 general election campaign, the leaders of the Indian National Congress, currently the largest opposition party, convened an unusual press conference. They announced that the party’s accounts had been frozen by tax authorities over a payment dispute, locking away some Rs. 2.1 billion ($25.3 million).

The move is just one indicator of a concerning trend: The government has used arcane regulatory enforcement actions to close the space for dissent across the country. Indians who criticize the government face significant risks, raising doubts about the fairness of the upcoming elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who leads the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is running for a third five-year term against a host of opposition groups.

Growing Obstacles to Government Criticism

Though Congress party officials will reportedly retain partial access to their frozen accounts until the dispute is resolved, the case was only the latest in a pattern of actions in which government critics have suffered financial repercussions at the hands of state authorities. Over the past several years, officials have issued a raft of allegations of financial impropriety and sought to raid or restrict the activities of opposition leaders, civil society organizations, and human rights activists. Though some investigations may be legitimate anti-corruption inquiries, many appear to be politicized. In effect, they raise the costs for criticism of the government, draining the resources of an already fragile civil society sector and undermining the diversity of India’s political discourse.

Indian civil society organizations face significant operational barriers, including tight restrictions on foreign funding under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). To fundraise internationally, nonprofits must be licensed under the act, which entails strict controls administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Authorities have invoked the FCRA to investigate prominent organizations that have reported critically on the government, including Amnesty International India, which has halted its activities because of the probe. The International Commission of Jurists found that some 19,000 FCRA licenses were canceled between 2014 and 2020, noting that the cancellations were imposed “selectively to silence critical voices.”

Individuals involved in civil society activism are not much safer. Prominent journalist Rana Ayyub, one of the most vocal critics of Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda, has endured multiple rounds of legal and extralegal harassment, including a years-long money-laundering investigation over the alleged misappropriation of funds from a COVID-19 relief effort. BJP critic Harsh Mander, formerly affiliated with the Congress party, has seen his home raided and his nonprofit investigated over alleged FCRA violations, with fellow activists denouncing the enforcement actions as politically motivated. 

A Sprawling Censorship Apparatus to Limit Information Diversity

India’s 2024 elections will be the world’s largest, with over 986 million people registered to vote. Hundreds of millions of citizens will rely on the internet to learn about the candidates and party platforms. But the Indian government has asserted increasing authority over online content, particularly under the BJP, and it regularly forces social media companies to remove content that officials deem unlawful.

Critics of Prime Minister Modi, the ruling party, or the Hindu nationalist policies that they champion are the prime targets of this censorship apparatus. In the first two months of 2024, the websites and social media accounts and posts that Indian authorities sought to scrub from the internet included:

• a Caravan magazine article alleging that Indian soldiers killed three civilians in Jammu and Kashmir;

• over a dozen social media accounts linked to the leaders of a farmers’ protest, who called for a stronger social safety net;

• a post on X (formerly Twitter) from the U.S.-based Sikh Coalition, calling on President Joe Biden to advocate for the rights of the protesting farmers; and

• Hindutva Watch and India Hate Lab, two websites dedicated to tracking hate crimes and hate speech in India, as well as some affiliated social media accounts.

The affected content ranged from independent civil society research that reflected unfavorably on the government’s policies to online civic mobilization that sought to influence policy directly. Diverse and independent discussion of politics, the economy, and broader societal challenges plays a critical role in shaping voters’ choices ahead of elections. Degrading access to such information fundamentally limits free decision-making and infringes on the exercise of citizens’ most important political right.

An Uneven Playing Field

A free and fair election requires an environment in which people can discuss politics, express their personal views, and access information about the government and opposition without fear of retribution. From politicized FCRA enforcement to partisan online censorship, the Indian government’s actions have undermined these basic rights. They also underscore officials’ willingness to deploy state resources to influence the elections in the BJP’s favor.

Government officials—including the tax investigation authorities at the Ministry of Finance and those at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology who are tasked with enforcing online content regulations—should ensure that law enforcement efforts do not harm the conduct of the elections. Investigations into alleged FCRA irregularities should not be initiated for political purposes, whether to hinder opposition politicians or to limit the activities of a civil society group. Independent oversight is crucial: election authorities should vigorously apply the principles set out in the Model Code of Conduct, which takes effect when election dates are announced and calls on the ruling party to not abuse “its official position for the purposes of its election campaign.”

Those corrective measures alone will not guarantee free and fair elections. Political leaders have employed even blunter instruments to silence dissent. Indian journalists are all too frequently arrested or prosecuted over critical reporting, opposition politicians have been disqualified from running or barred from the legislature, and internet shutdowns remain common. However, a truly democratic process will be impossible if free expression is not protected from politicized, disproportionate, and illegitimate interference by government actors.

This is a slightly updated version of a piece previously published in Freedom House.

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