India on Thursday hit out at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and said that it is trying to “interfere” in the Indian election process. Speaking to the media during the weekly interaction, Official Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs Randhir Jaiswal described the U.S. government entity, which came out with a report on religious freedom earlier this week, as a “biased organisation with a political agenda”.
“The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is known as a biased organization with a political agenda. They continue to publish their propaganda on India masquerading as part of an annual report. We really have no expectation that USCIRF will even seek to understand India’s diverse, pluralistic and democratic ethos,” said Mr. Jaiswal, in his response to a question on the USCIRF’s annual report which demanded that India should be declared by the U.S. government as a “country of particular concern” because of what it described as “particularly severe religious freedom violations”.
Mr. Jaiswal said, “Their efforts to interfere in the largest electoral exercise of the world will never succeed.” India and the U.S. are both part of the Quad formation with Australia and Japan, and both sides have often in the past talked about “shared values” like dedication to civil liberties and freedom.
