In what is being viewed as a slap in the face of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's administration, an official investigation has concluded that India didn't interfere in the North American country's national polls held in 2021.
Earlier, Ottawa accused New Delhi of meddling in its election process and opened an inquiry into it in the aftermath of deteriorating ties between the two nations following Trudeau's explosive accusations of the Indian government's hand in the killing of proscribed Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
"I do not believe during the 2021 election that we saw evidence of Government of India using those tools in the campaign," a poll official informed the panel investigating the allegations.
It is worth noting that Trudeau has been at the helm of affairs in Canada since 2015.
While his Liberal Party secured an overwhelming majority in the 338-member parliament in 2015, in the two subsequent elections in 2019 and 2021, the 52-year-old only managed to form a minority government with the support of his alliance partners after his political outfit failed to gain an outright majority.
In February, India dismissed Canada's claims, underlining that being the world's largest democracy, it was committed to "non-interference" in the electoral practices of foreign nations.
"We strongly reject all such baseless allegations of Indian interference in Canadian elections," Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman of the External Affairs Ministry of the South Asian sovereign state said in a media interaction in New Delhi.
"It is not the government of India's policy to interfere in the democratic processes of other countries. In fact, quite on the reverse, it is Canada which has been interfering in our internal affairs," he elaborated.
One must remember that relations between India and Canada have been under rough weather since October after Trudeau blamed the agents of the Indian government for carrying out the assassination of Nijjar on Canadian soil.
Nijjar, who was wanted in a series of cases in India, including for hate crimes was gunned down by unidentified gunmen in Surrey in June last year.
India refuted Canada's allegations over Nijjar's death, describing them as "absurd" and "politically motivated."