NEW DELHI: Following up on PM Modi’s announcement in last year’s Independence Day speech, govt on Monday constituted a high-level committee to scientifically examine the nature, causes and impact of demographic changes across the country, including due to illegal immigration as well as abnormal population shifts at the levels of religious and social communities, and recommend policy, administrative and legal framework to address the problem in a time-bound manner.The high-level committee on demographic changes (HLCDC), to be headed by retired Supreme Court judge Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, has been formed amid an intensified drive by BJP govts in Assam, West Bengal and other states to curb illegal immigration, which they see as a conspiracy to introduce demographic changes, and expel all infiltrators.Announcing the panel on Tuesday, Shah said on X, “Unnatural demographic changes caused by illegal immigration and other factors are a serious challenge to any country’s present and future… it is linked not only to our sovereignty, but also to national security, law and order, profound change in social structure, and the preservation of tribal groups.” Panel given a year to submit final report This follows the recent special intensive revision of electoral rolls by Election Commission, including in the border state of Bengal, which led to deletion of lakhs of ‘absent’ and ‘other’ electors – their details are already in public domain.HLCDC – tasked with recommending a permanent operational system for legal, fair and time-bound identification, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants in the country – comes at a time when BJP is in office in Assam, Tripura and Bengal. Sharing that census commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, retired IAS officer Durga Shankar Mishra, ex-IPS officer Balaji Srivastava and economist Shamika Ravi would be members of the committee, Shah said it will “conduct a comprehensive assessment of demographic changes occurring across India due to illegal immigration and other unnatural causes, analyse pattern of abnormal population shifts at the level of religious and social communities and present a planned and time-bound solution for the same”.The panel, which will be under the ministry of home affairs), has been given a year to submit its final report.Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma has launched an aggressive drive against infiltrators and has publicly vowed to push them back into Bangladesh. The newly elected BJP govt in Bengal has quickly got down to the task, with CM Suvendu Adhikari deciding to make land available to complete the fencing of the border with Bangladesh.Notifying the panel, MHA said demographic changes were visible in certain regions that are not attributable to normal fertility or mortality trends, but emerging due to “external abnormal factors such as illegal immigration, irregular population mobility and administrative laxity”.
