India on Wednesday said the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) should be designated as an “entity of concern” after the outfit recommended targeted sanctions on RAW and a former official for his alleged role in a foiled plot to assassinate Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York in 2023.

In its 2025 annual report, the USCIRF — a bipartisan US federal government agency — also alleged that religious freedom in India continued to shrink as attacks on and discrimination against religious minorities continued to rise. For the sixth year in a row, the USCIRF designated India as a “Country of Particular Concern (CPC)”.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Wednesday that the USCIRF’s “persistent” attempts to cast aspersions on India’s “vibrant multicultural society” reflected a “deliberate” agenda rather than a genuine concern for religious freedom.

New Delhi described the report as “biased and politically motivated” and said the efforts to “undermine” India’s standing as a beacon of democracy and tolerance would not succeed, adding the USCIRF should be designated as an “entity of concern”.

The USCIRF had recommended to the US government that “targeted sanctions” be imposed “on individuals and entities, such as Vikash Yadav and RAW, for their culpability in severe violations of religious freedom by freezing their assets and/or barring their entry into the United States”.

The US has charged Yadav, a former Indian government official, in the alleged foiled plot to kill Pannun on American soil in 2023.

In its recommendation, the USCIRF also called for designating India as a CPC for engaging in and “tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)”.

This is the first CPC recommendation by the USCIRF under the second Trump administration and the state department will take a view on the report later this year.

Jaiswal said the report was a continuation of the USCIRF’s pattern of issuing “biased and politically motivated assessments”.

“The USCIRF’s persistent attempts to misrepresent isolated incidents and cast aspersions on India’s vibrant multicultural society reflect a deliberate agenda rather than a genuine concern for religious freedom,” he said.

“India is home to 1.4 billion people who are adherents to all religions known to mankind. However, we have no expectation that the USCIRF will engage with the reality of India’s pluralistic framework or acknowledge the harmonious coexistence of its diverse communities,” he said.

“Such efforts to undermine India’s standing as a beacon of democracy and tolerance will not succeed. In fact, it is the USCIRF that should be designated as an entity of concern,” Jaiswal said.

The USCIRF has separately recommended to the US Congress to reintroduce, pass and enforce the Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024 to ensure the annual reporting of acts of transnational repression by the Indian government targeting religious minorities in the US. It has also suggested a review assessing whether arms sales to India, such as MQ-9B drones under Section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act, may contribute to or exacerbate religious freedom violations.