India on Thursday said it strongly rejects allegations that it tried to influence democratic processes in Canada.
“We have seen media reports about [the] Canadian Commission enquiring into foreign interference and there have been some related developments as well,” Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said at a press briefing. “We strongly reject such baseless allegations of Indian interference in Canadian elections. It is not Government of India’s policy to interfere in the democratic process of other countries.”
Jaiswal said that on the contrary, it is Canada that has been interfering in India’s internal affairs. “We have been raising this issue regularly with them,” he said. “We continue to call on Canada to take effective measures to address our core concerns.”
This comes amid strained diplomatic ties between Ottawa and New Delhi over India’s alleged involvement in the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down near Vancouver by two masked men, in June.
On January 24, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service named India as a foreign interference threat that tried to influence democratic processes in the North American country.
The authority, in a document dated February 24, 2023, called for more efforts “to protect Canada’s robust democratic institutions and processes”.
According to Global News, while the document had nearly three pages devoted to India, they were completely redacted except for a single sentence: “India engages in FI [Foreign Interference] activities.”
An independent commission was set up by the Canadian government in September to look into alleged meddling by foreign countries in its general elections in 2019 and 2021.
The commission was constituted in response to reports of alleged Chinese attempts to influence the polls in the North American country, Reuters reported.
Diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Ottawa have been strained since September, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the country’s parliament that intelligence agencies were actively pursuing “credible allegations” linking agents of the Indian government to Nijjar’s death.
New Delhi rejected Canada’s allegations as “absurd and motivated”. The Indian government also described the claims as Ottawa’s attempt to shift focus from “Khalistani terrorists and extremists who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
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