Freedom of expression during each prime minister's tenure

Every prime minister since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	Prime minister	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	P. V. Narasimha Rao	21 Jun 1991 – 1 Jun 1996 from 1991	+3.0 points 1991 → 1995	+0.8 points/yr
2	Atal Bihari Vajpayee	19 Mar 1998 – 22 May 2004	−0.5 points 1997 → 2003	−0.1 points/yr
3	Manmohan Singh	22 May 2004 – 26 May 2014	−2.3 points 2003 → 2013	−0.2 points/yr
4	Narendra Modi	26 May 2014 – now	−41.1 points 2013 → 2025	−3.4 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · India data · as of Sep 2026.