India’s Union Home Minister Amit Shah has directed the home ministry to provide all kinds of administrative and logistical support to a high-level committee formed to examine the demographic change caused by illegal infiltration in districts bordering Bangladesh and in various strategic areas of India.
He gave the directive at a high-level meeting with senior home ministry officials on Saturday (June 13). The main aim of India’s initiative is to examine the issue of alleged illegal immigration and infiltration, mainly from Bangladesh.
Nearly a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement, this special high-level committee was formally constituted on May 26, and the committee held its first meeting on June 2. Led by retired Supreme Court judge Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, the panel will mainly visit districts bordering Bangladesh, various metropolitan areas and industrial zones. The panel’s main task is to examine on the ground what kind of change is coming to the population balance in India’s border areas and how much of a role illegal infiltration plays behind it.
Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Tapan Kumar Deka, and India’s Registrar General and Census Commissioner Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, along with other senior ministry officials, attended Saturday’s important meeting. A senior home ministry official said the committee’s work has already begun and its plan of action has been finalized.
Earlier, at the committee’s first meeting on June 2, it was decided that the panel would also examine the dropping of names from voter rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise conducted in 13 Indian states and union territories. Analysts say the committee’s move is directly linked to the long-running debate over updating voter rolls and citizenship issues in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and other states bordering Bangladesh. The panel has already requisitioned necessary documents from various government departments.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report