India's representative to the United Nations, diplomat Anuj Swarup, told a session of the General Assembly's Third Committee in New York on Friday that his country would not accept the Special Rapporteur's report on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association. Swarup contended that conclusions drawn about the country's youth population rested on anonymous, unverified sources rather than substantive evidence, and that producing reports of this nature had contributed to a broader erosion of confidence in the UN and its bodies.
According to a document published by Special Rapporteur Gina Romero, young people in India who raised concerns about mental health or gender justice faced backlash or social stigma as a result. The report's footnote traced the claim to an unspecified submission, leaving the original source unidentified.
Swarup, a first secretary at India's Geneva mission to the UN, argued that drawing broad conclusions about 1.4 billion people from undisclosed inputs undermines the purpose of the mandate the holder was appointed to fulfil.
On two separate occasions within the same week, India raised concerns at the UN human rights body, contending that reports produced by the mechanism lacked factual grounding and were undermining its standing. Addressing the body on Wednesday, Swarup contended that High Commissioner Volker Turk applies inconsistent standards across his assessments, noting that government crackdowns on protests — whether in the region or across Western countries — had gone unaddressed in the commissioner's reports, a gap he maintained was eroding trust in the office.
Pushing back against the special rapporteur's Friday submission, Swarup pointed to what he described as a contradiction within the report itself — namely, that it acknowledged young Indians had built a satirical political movement, the Cockroach Janta Party, whose members had organised demonstrations in the capital, posed pointed questions to the government, and subsequently held direct talks with senior national figures. He asked what kind of repressive state would permit that sequence of events.
Romero, according to that account, had likely overlooked a position Turk put forward at the Human Rights Council a month earlier — that engaging directly with young leaders yields greater results within the framework of youth-driven organising in India.
Speaking on 7 September, Turk put forward the view that engaging young people through conversation — rather than deploying force — was the more fitting way to handle protests, and pointed to the government's management of student demonstrations over alleged irregularities in public examinations as one example of this approach in practice. After students raised those concerns that summer, officials entered into talks with youth representatives, and Parliament went on to amend the Public Examinations Act within weeks.
Penalties for leaking examination papers were doubled, a broad overhaul of the testing framework was undertaken, and dedicated fast-track courts were established in every state to handle cases involving exam-related fraud, according to his account.
Romero, replying to Swarup's critique, noted that while India ranks among the world's largest democracies and operates various bodies designed to bring young people into public decision-making, young people were nonetheless taking to the streets in protest — a point she returned to in reiterating her earlier position.
The Human Rights Council selected Romero, an activist from Colombia, to serve as rapporteur. Those holding rapporteur positions operate independently of the UN's permanent workforce, taking on their mandates as private individuals and drawing no remuneration for the work.
