The report, which was released in May, said India’s ranking fell down to 150th position from last year’s 142nd rank.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha, Thakur said “the government does not subscribe to its (NGO’s) views and country rankings… for various reasons, including very low sample size, little or no weightage to fundamentals of democracy, adoption of a methodology which is questionable and non-transparent, etc.”

Thakur’s statement was in response to a query by Trinamool Congress MP Mala Roy and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MPs A Raja and A Ganeshamurthi, asking “whether it is a fact that India ranked in the bottom 30 worst nations out of 180 as maintained by the media watchdog in the World Press Freedom Index”.