Demographic changes due to illegal migration not limited to border areas: Ministry of Home Affairs

New Delhi: The demographic changes due to illegal migration are not limited just to border areas, but their impact has extended, "affecting urban centres, industrial corridors, tribal regions, and other socially and economically sensitive areas," said a government notification.

The notification issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on the constitution of a High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC) under Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, a retired Supreme Court judge, said "extensive challenges" have arisen from demographic changes due to illegal immigration.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah had announced the formation of the committee to assess demographic changes across India due to "illegal immigration and other unnatural causes".

Headquartered in New Delhi, the committee will also include the Census Commissioner, along with retired IAS officer Durga Shankar Mishra, ex-IPS officer Balaji Srivastava and Dr Shamika Ravi as members and will submit its report in a year.

"The joint secretary (foreigners-l), Ministry of Home Affairs, will serve as the member secretary of this committee," Shah had said on Tuesday.

The notification said demographic changes have been observed in certain regions of the country, which are "not attributable to normal fertility or mortality trends" but are instead emerging due to external abnormal factors such as "illegal immigration, irregular population mobility, and administrative laxity".

"Although these changes are most visibly concentrated in the border districts, their impact has extended beyond those areas, now affecting urban centres, industrial corridors, tribal regions, and other socially and economically sensitive areas, thereby severely impacting public service delivery, local governance, resource distribution, and social cohesion," it said.

The existing institutional framework has not been adequately equipped to undertake coordinated, evidence-based, and time-bound evaluation and response to such demographic shifts, the notification said.

"...therefore, the Government of India resolves to constitute a High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC) under the Ministry of Home Affairs to undertake scientific study of the nature, causes and consequences of such demographic changes occurring across the country and to recommend appropriate policy, administrative and legal measures," it said.

The committee is tasked to submit its report within a year after undertaking an extensive consideration of the challenges arising from demographic changes, including illegal immigration.

The panel will study the possible causes of such demographic changes, such as variations in fertility, cross-border movement (including illegal immigration), economic opportunities, and other socio-environmental factors and underlying factors behind changes, including illegal immigration, abnormal settlement patterns, and planned migration.

It will analyse the structural population changes at the level of religious or social communities, especially those diverging from uniform trends and recommend a well-organised and permanent operational system for the "legal, fair and time-bound identification, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants already residing in the country." The panel will also recommend an institutional mechanism to strengthen border management, population stabilisation, and identification systems for sustained monitoring of such trends, besides proposing a comprehensive policy framework to enhance coordination between the Centre and state governments in such matters, it said.