India has decided to study and fix “unnatural and abnormal demographic shifts due to illegal migration in border areas.”
PM Modi has tasked Union Home Minister Amit Shah to take action on the issue.
Illegal immigration is now classified as a serious risk to India’s national security and social cohesion.
A High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes is being crated. Headed by the retired Supreme Court judge Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, it will study shifts across India due to “illegal immigration and other unnatural causes,” their impacts on border areas, urban centers, industrial hubs, tribal regions and recommend policy, administrative, and legal fixes.
Home Minister Shah has issued new instructions in border areas requiring District Magistrates (DMs) and Superintendents of Police (SPs) to strictly monitor and regularly report on demographic changes.
This includes setting up Security Coordination Groups, deporting settled infiltrators (involving everyone from police stations to patwaris) and enforcing migration laws.
Both minister Shah and PM Modi have previously described the demographic changes in border villages as a “deliberate design” via encroachments from abroad and have pointed to the impact it has had in regions such as Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura and tribal areas.
They warn that the demographic shifts from infiltration have direct security implications along India’s borders with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Proactive data collection will help enforce migration laws and manage population dynamics seen as a long-term challenge to India’s stability through new strategies for deportation, border management and counter-migration urban planning.
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