India turns table on Canada, rejects allegation of interfering in foreign elections

New Delhi: After Canada’s intelligence agency identified it as a “foreign interference threat” that could potentially seek to influence the elections in the North American country, New Delhi on Thursday dismissed the allegations and rather turned the table on Ottawa, accusing it of meddling in the internal affairs of India.

New Delhi called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in Ottawa to address its “core concerns” over the secessionist campaign run by the Khalistani Sikh extremists against India from Canada.

“We strongly reject all such baseless allegations of Indian interference in Canadian elections," Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said in New Delhi.

He was responding to a query on recent media reports that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had alerted Ottawa about New Delhi’s potential interference in elections in the country. It, however, primarily focussed on China’s ‘foreign interference’ activities aimed at influencing elections in Canada. India and China were the only two countries identified by names in the latest intelligence report of Canada.

A Federal Commission of Inquiry probing foreign interference in Canadian polls last month expressed interest in examining alleged meddling by India in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections in the country.

“It is not the policy of the Government of India to interfere in the democratic processes of other countries. In fact, quite on the reverse, it is Canada, which has been interfering in our internal affairs,” Jaiswal, the MEA spokesperson, said in New Delhi.

“We have been raising this issue regularly with them. We continue to call on Canada to take effective measures to address our core concerns,” he added, apparently referring to Ottawa’s reluctance to act on New Delhi’s request to deal with the extremists and running a campaign from Canada for carving out a Khalistan from India.

Trudeau and his government in Canada invoked freedom of speech as an excuse for not acting against the Khalistani Sikh extremists, who often led aggressive protests against India’s high commission in Ottawa and the consulates in Toronto and Vancouver, and also ran hate campaigns against India’s diplomats in Canada.

New Delhi’s relations with Ottawa nosedived after Trudeau on September 18 told the House of Commons – the lower house of the Parliament of Canada – that his government’s security agencies had been actively pursuing the ‘credible allegations’ about ‘a potential link’ between India’s agents and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Khalistani Sikh terrorist, in Canada.

Nijjar was the commander of the Khalistan Tiger Force and one of India’s most wanted fugitive extremists. He, however, has been living in Canada for the past several years and has been involved in running the campaign for the secession of Khalistan from India.

He was shot dead at the parking lot of a gurdwara at Surrey in the British Columbia province of Canada on June 18.

New Delhi dismissed Ottawa’s allegation, calling it ‘absurd’, ‘motivated’ and ‘unsubstantiated’. The allegation, however, triggered a diplomatic row, with both sides expelling each other’s diplomats and issuing tit-for-tat travel advisories.

India called Canada a safe haven for terrorists and suspended issuing visas for Canadians. It, however, recently restarted issuing certain categories of visas for the citizens of Canada. New Delhi also made Ottawa downsize its high commission in the national capital of India and its consulates in other cities in the country, leading to the departure of 41 diplomats of Canada.