New Delhi: Following PM Modi’s announcement in last year’s Independence Day speech, the government on Monday constituted a high-level committee to scientifically examine the nature, causes and impact of demographic changes across the country, including illegal immigration as well as abnormal population shifts at the level 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 Change (HLCDC), headed by retired Supreme Court judge Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, has been formed amid an intensified campaign by the BJP governments in Assam, West Bengal and other states to curb illegal immigration, which they see as a conspiracy to bring about demographic change and drive out 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 the present and future of any country… This is not only linked to our sovereignty, but also to national security, law and order, profound changes in the social structure and protection of tribal groups.” The panel was given one year to submit the final report. This follows the recent particularly intensive revision of voter lists by the Election Commission, including in the border state of Bengal, which led to the deletion of lakhs of ‘absentee’ and ‘other’ voters – their details are already in the public domain.The HLCDC – tasked with recommending a permanent operational system for legal, fair and timely identification, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants in the country – comes at a time when the BJP is in power in Assam, Tripura and Bengal.Sharing that Census Commissioner Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, retired IAS officer Durga Shankar Mishra, former IPS officer Balaji Srivastava and economist Shamika Ravi will be members of the committee, Shah said it will “comprehensively assess the demographic changes occurring across India due to illegal immigration and other unnatural causes, analyze the patterns of abnormal population shifts at the level of religious and social communities and present a planned and time-bound solution for the same.” Will do”.The panel, which will be under the Home Ministry), has been given one year to submit its final report.Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has launched an aggressive campaign against the infiltrators and publicly vowed to push them back into Bangladesh. The newly elected BJP government in Bengal has got into work fast, with CM Suvendu Adhikari deciding to provide land to complete the fencing work on the border with Bangladesh.Informing the panel, the MHA said some areas are witnessing demographic changes that are not attributable to normal fertility or mortality trends but are emerging due to “external abnormal factors such as illegal immigration, irregular population dynamics and administrative laxity”.