Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury
Part IV of Democracy on Decline in India
India is not witnessing an old-style coup. There are no tanks on Rajpath, no formal suspension of elections, no midnight announcement abolishing Parliament. The danger is more sophisticated. The democratic shell remains, but the competitive field is being steadily redesigned. As the attached documents sharply frame it, democracy can be weakened “in instalments” through investigative pressure, media capture, money power, voter-list manipulation, social-media control and the normalisation of fear.
The central question today is not whether corruption should be investigated. It must be. The question is whether ED, CBI, Income Tax, Delhi Police, intelligence inputs, anti-terror laws and preventive detention are being used evenly as instruments of law, or selectively as instruments of political discipline. When the accused is in opposition, the machinery roars. When the same leader crosses over, the machinery often cools. That pattern is the poison.
Democracy Dies When the Referee Joins the Game
The global context is grim. V-Dem’s 2026 Democracy Report classifies India as an “electoral autocracy” since 2017 and describes India’s democratic decline as a slow but systematic dismantling involving media freedom, harassment of critical journalists, attacks on civil society and pressure on the opposition. Freedom House’s 2026 report rates India “Partly Free” with a score of 62/100, noting increased harassment of journalists, NGOs and government critics. Reporters Without Borders ranks India 157th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 31.96, saying press freedom is in crisis in the “world’s largest democracy.”
This is the language of democratic backsliding: not the end of elections, but the end of a fair fight. The attached note rightly says modern authoritarianism often looks normal from outside: Parliament meets, TV debates happen, courts function, but gradually “the spirit of democracy is drained out while its shell remains.”
The ED as Political Weather: Heat Before Defection, Cool Air After
The Enforcement Directorate has become the central symbol of this age. Its legal powers under PMLA are formidable: search, summons, attachment, arrest, long incarceration, and a bail regime that effectively reverses the presumption of liberty. Reuters reported in March 2024 that the ED had summoned, questioned or raided nearly 150 opposition politicians since 2014, compared with four BJP politicians in the same period, based on court records, party statements and media reports. Reuters also reported that at least a dozen opposition politicians under ED scrutiny had switched allegiance to the BJP or its alliance, while opposition parties alleged that investigations against defectors were dropped or put on hold.
The Indian Express investigation is even more devastating. Since 2014, it found that 25 prominent politicians facing action from central agencies crossed over to the BJP; in 23 cases, the political switch translated into reprieve: three cases closed and 20 stalled or placed in cold storage. Another Indian Express investigation found a fourfold jump in ED cases against politicians since 2014, with 95% of those investigated belonging to the opposition.
This is why the phrase “washing machine” has entered the Indian political vocabulary. Himanta Biswa Sarma, Ajit Pawar, Praful Patel, Suvendu Adhikari, Ashok Chavan and others are repeatedly cited in public discourse as examples of leaders who faced serious allegations while outside the BJP/NDA ecosystem but saw the intensity of proceedings reduce after political realignment. The attached DemocracyF note calls this “selective heat and selective cooling” and argues that it destroys democratic confidence, because anti-corruption becomes a weapon rather than a principle.
Process as Punishment: The Real Conviction Is Incarceration
The government often points to ED conviction rates. Official ED data says that in concluded PMLA trials, 56 of 60 cases resulted in conviction, a 93.33% rate. But Parliament data also shows the larger funnel: as of December 31, 2025, ED had recorded 8,391 ECIRs, filed prosecution complaints in 1,960 cases, and judgments on merits had been delivered in only 58 cases.
That is the hidden democratic problem. In politically sensitive cases, punishment does not always wait for conviction. Summons becomes headlines. Raids become a spectacle. Arrest becomes political messaging. Bail takes months. Trial may take years. The accused is legally “innocent until proven guilty,” but politically crippled immediately.
This is why agency action just before elections matters. A leader in jail cannot campaign freely. A party whose treasurer is fighting tax recovery cannot spend freely. A journalist whose phone is seized cannot report freely. A student activist under UAPA cannot participate freely. The process itself becomes the penalty.
AAP: The Laboratory of Agency Politics
The Aam Aadmi Party became the clearest laboratory of this method. Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Satyendar Jain all faced long legal battles. The Indian Express reported that Manish Sisodia spent 17 months in jail before walking out in August 2024, while Sanjay Singh spent six months in prison before being bailed in April 2024. The Supreme Court, while granting interim bail to Kejriwal in the ED case in July 2024, recorded that liberty is “sacrosanct” and that Kejriwal had suffered incarceration of over 90 days.
The political timing was unmistakable: Kejriwal was arrested in March 2024 during the national election season. Reuters later reported that a Delhi court in February 2026 declined to proceed with a trial against Kejriwal and others in the CBI case, while the CBI said it would appeal. Whatever the final legal outcome, the political outcome had already happened: AAP’s top leadership spent crucial electoral periods in courtrooms, prisons and press conferences about allegations rather than governance.
Shiv Sena, Sanjay Raut and the Message to Regional Parties
The Shiv Sena experience demonstrates how agencies can intersect with party splits and federal politics. Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (UBT) was arrested by the ED in 2022 in the Patra Chawl case. A special PMLA court granted him bail after over three months and, according to the Indian Express, sharply criticised the ED for “illegal arrest.”
The message to regional parties is brutal: oppose the Centre, and you face raids, summons, arrests and financial strangulation; align with the ruling ecosystem, and survival becomes easier. This does not mean every accused opposition leader is innocent. It means the pattern of enforcement produces rational fear. A politician does not need to be convicted to be neutralised. A party does not need to be banned to be weakened. A coalition does not need to be defeated by voters if it can be fractured by pressure.
Hemant Soren: Jailing a Chief Minister Before the People Decide
Hemant Soren’s arrest in January 2024 in an ED case sent another message: even a sitting Chief Minister of an opposition-ruled state can be pushed out of office through agency action. Soren denied wrongdoing and alleged a political conspiracy. The Jharkhand High Court later granted him bail in June 2024, reasoning that there was no likelihood of him committing a similar offence; he returned as Chief Minister in July 2024.
Again, the core democratic question is not whether Soren should or should not be investigated. The question is whether elected mandates can be destabilised through pre-trial incarceration in politically timed cases. In a federal democracy, jailing an elected Chief Minister is not an ordinary legal event. It is a constitutional shock.
Income Tax as Electoral Chokehold
The Income Tax Department has also become a political weapon in perception, especially when action is taken close to elections. In February 2024, Reuters reported that Congress said its bank accounts containing ₹2.1 billion, about $25.3 million, had been frozen over an income-tax demand months before the general election. The BJP denied political vendetta and argued that the matter arose from tax violations. But in electoral politics, timing is not a footnote. Freezing the principal opposition’s funds weeks before an election does not merely enforce tax law; it alters campaign capacity.
The same logic applies to media. Human Rights Watch described the 2023 Income Tax raids on BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai as an apparent reprisal after a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When tax scrutiny follows critical journalism, every newsroom understands the signal.
From Anti-Corruption to Anti-Dissent: UAPA, NSA and Police Power
The coercive net does not stop with politicians. It extends to activists, students, journalists and intellectuals. Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have become symbols of the “jail without trial” crisis under UAPA. The Supreme Court Observer notes that both were accused in FIR 59/2020 relating to the Delhi riots conspiracy case, and that the Supreme Court denied them bail on January 5, 2026, while granting bail to five other co-accused under strict conditions. LiveLaw reported in April 2026 that the Supreme Court dismissed Umar Khalid’s review plea against the denial of bail.
Sonam Wangchuk’s preventive detention under the National Security Act shows another layer. Supreme Court Observer recorded that Wangchuk was detained in late September 2025 after Ladakh protests demanding constitutional safeguards turned violent, and that he was shifted to Jodhpur Central Jail, far from Ladakh. Al Jazeera reported that India ended his preventive detention in March 2026 after six months in jail. A climate innovator demanding statehood and Sixth Schedule protections being treated through national-security detention is the democratic equivalent of using a sledgehammer on a citizen’s voice.
Surveillance and the Invisible State
The Intelligence Bureau and surveillance architecture are harder to document because secrecy is their operating condition. But the larger climate is clear. Amnesty International reported forensic findings of repeated Pegasus spyware use against high-profile Indian journalists, placing it amid a broader crackdown on peaceful expression, assembly, civil society and activists. Reuters reported that X took down accounts and posts linked by media to farmers’ protests after the Indian government orders; X said it disagreed and described the action as curtailing freedom of expression.
The result is self-censorship. Journalists think before publishing. NGOs think before mobilising. Academics think before signing statements. Businesspeople think before funding opposition. Civil servants think before acting neutrally. Fear decentralises itself.
NewsClick: The Media as Suspect
The NewsClick case shows how journalism can be pushed into the national-security frame. Amnesty reported that 46 journalists were questioned, two people were arrested, phones and laptops were seized, and the NewsClick office was sealed; it also noted that NewsClick had earlier been raided by ED in 2021. In May 2024, the Supreme Court ordered NewsClick editor Prabir Purkayastha’s release, holding his arrest and remand illegal.
This is the pattern: raid first, seize devices, create suspicion, drain resources, isolate the target, and let the legal process crawl. Even when courts intervene later, the chilling effect has already spread.
CBI: The Old “Caged Parrot” in a New Cage
The CBI’s dependence on the Union government is not new. In 2013, the Supreme Court famously called it a “caged parrot” and “its master’s voice.” What has changed is the political environment in which that cage operates. The Indian Express reported in 2024 that Karnataka became the eighth state to withdraw general consent to the CBI, joining Punjab, Jharkhand, Kerala, West Bengal, Telangana, Meghalaya and Tamil Nadu; except Meghalaya, all were ruled by parties in opposition to the Centre. When opposition-ruled states withdraw consent, it is not procedural trivia. It is a federal trust breakdown.
The Democratic Damage: Opposition Becomes a Legal Department
The deepest damage is not only to individual leaders. It is to the architecture of political competition. An opposition party should spend its energy building policy, organising workers, raising funds, mobilising voters and debating government failures. Instead, it spends disproportionate energy arranging bail, answering summons, defending bank accounts, countering raids and explaining allegations.
The attached document proposes a National Legal Defence and Documentation Grid to track every raid, summons, arrest, bail order, chargesheet delay, acquittal, defection and post-defection silence. That is essential. Evidence must replace only emotion. Every case must be mapped. Every timing must be recorded. Every defection must be followed by a status update on the case.
The Republic of Fear
A democracy is not destroyed only when voters are stopped from voting. It is also destroyed when voters are given choices already weakened by fear. When opposition leaders are jailed before elections, when defectors are rewarded with silence, when student activists spend years awaiting trial, when climate activists face NSA detention, when journalists face raids, when social-media posts vanish under opaque orders, when party funds are frozen close to elections, the voter still votes — but not in a free political ecosystem.
The government and agencies deny political targeting and say they act under the law. That defence must be tested by data, not slogans. Investigate corruption, but investigate across parties. Prosecute wrongdoing, but do not use incarceration as a campaign strategy. Enforce tax law, but do not choke opposition finance before elections. Protect national security, but do not convert dissent into sedition, terrorism or public-order threat.
The test of democracy is not how the state treats its supporters. It is how the state treats its critics. On that test, India is in dangerous territory. The new Emergency is not declared. It is administered. It arrives as summons, raids, freezes, notices, chargesheets, spyware, takedowns and preventive detention. It does not abolish democracy in one stroke. It makes democracy afraid of itself.
The author is a well-known academic and a democracy analyst.
