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The people’s newsroom

PolicyHome affairs

Demographic change panel opens portal for public inputs on illegal immigration

The committee set up by the Home Ministry in May is asking governments, institutions and individuals to send data on population shifts and settlement patterns.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished
North Block, home of the Ministry of Home Affairs
North Block, home of the Ministry of Home AffairsPhoto: Pinakpani / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. Retired Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar launched the portal at demography.mha.gov.in.
  2. The committee must recommend a system to identify, detain and deport illegal immigrants.
  3. It was set up on 26 May and has one year to submit its final report.

A committee set up by the Union Home Ministry to study demographic change and illegal immigration has opened a public web portal and invited submissions from governments, organisations and ordinary citizens.

Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, a retired Supreme Court judge who chairs the High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes, launched the portal at demography.mha.gov.in in New Delhi on Wednesday. Central ministries, state and Union Territory governments, NGOs, institutions and individuals can use it to send data and information on what the ministry calls “unnatural” demographic changes, their causes and abnormal settlement patterns.

What the committee is asked to do

The Home Ministry formally constituted the committee on 26 May 2026. Its terms of reference ask it to examine the challenges posed by demographic change, including illegal infiltration, and to study possible causes such as differences in fertility rates, cross-border movement, economic opportunity and planned migration. It is also to analyse structural changes in population at the level of religious and social communities that differ from general trends.

On the policy side, the panel must recommend a permanent system for the “legal, fair and time-bound” identification, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants. It will also suggest ways to strengthen border management, population stabilisation, identity systems and monitoring, and a framework for closer coordination between the Centre and the states.

Who is on it

Besides the chair, the committee includes the Census Commissioner, retired IAS officer Durga Shankar Mishra, retired IPS officer Balaji Srivastava and economist Shamika Ravi, with a Home Ministry joint secretary as member secretary. When it was formed it was given a year to submit its final report, which would fall due in May 2027.

The documents