'Saddam, Gaddafi used to win elections too', says Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi further said, "Bharatiya Janata Party MPs in Parliament tell me that they cannot have an open discussion. They say they are told what to say."

Lambasting the Centre over reports claiming decline of democracy in India, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi used to win elections as well.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses during the inauguration of Orphanage Polytechnic College Edavanna at Eranad in Malappuram on Tuesday. (ANI photo)

"Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi used to have elections. They used to win them. It wasn't like they weren't voting but there was no institutional framework to protect that vote," Rahul Gandhi said in online interaction with Brown University.

He made this comment while reacting to a question of Professor Ashutosh Varshney of Brown University on reports by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a Sweden-based institute which downgraded India to an "electoral autocracy," citing a decline in democratic freedoms and Freedom House analysis which shifted India's status from a 'free' country to 'partly-free.'

Rahul Gandhi further said, "Bharatiya Janata Party MPs in Parliament tell me that they cannot have an open discussion. They say they are told what to say."

The Indian government, however, had disproved the report by Freedom House and called it "misleading, incorrect and misplaced."