The Congress on Thursday referred to a purported report that suggested the Narendra Modi government had during the pandemic peak last year planned to curb media freedom, claiming that such sinister projects had exposed the regime’s anti-democratic mindset.

The purported ministerial report, revealed by The Caravan magazine, was the topic of discussion a day after Freedom House, an 80-year-old democracy watchdog mostly funded by the US government, dropped India from the list of “free countries” and suggested that it was being driven towards “authoritarianism”.

On Thursday, the Congress drew attention to the claim that central ministers and former journalists working for the BJP had held six meetings with a few reporters to prepare a strategy for curbing the section of the media that had been critical of the government and held it up as evidence of diminishing democracy in the country.

Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said: “A government communication report has revealed some very, very disturbing facts. There were five cabinet ministers — Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and S. Jaishankar — apart from four junior ministers who were part of this group. When we thought the government is focused on fighting corona and saving the lives of people, the Prime Minister was actually preparing to stab us in the back by compromising the freedom of speech and expression in the country by controlling free press.”

The Congress spokesperson read out from the purported report.

Referring to purported interactions between the ministers and BJP leaders during a meeting, Shrinate said: “Smriti Irani talks about tracking 50 negative influencers by the electronic media monitoring committee of the ministry of I&B.

“Swapan Dasgupta talks about ‘giving that little bit extra to journalists in a calibrated manner’. What is this extra? Surya Prakash, head of Prasar Bharati, says that ‘the government has enormous power to utilise its position and controlling them’. This is blatant exercise of power.”

Former journalist Nitin Gokhale, who worked for national security adviser Ajit Doval, was quoted as having suggested that journalists should be colour-coded.

Shrinate said: “They talk about colour coding, green for fence sitters, black for people who are against you, white for those who support you. (RSS ideologue S.) Gurumurthy talked about the ‘Pokhran effect’ — probably creating a big impact to manage headlines and divert attention. Ravi Shankar Prasad says ‘there needs to be a pool of spin doctors, who must give a spin to every government story.’ He is talking about academicians, VCs, retired IFS officers.”