Centre sets up High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes to study unnatural population shifts

📌 Summary:

• Government on Tuesday constituted a High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC) under the MHA
• Mandate: scientific study of "unnatural demographic changes" and policy/administrative/legal recommendations
• Chair: retired Supreme Court judge Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar; members include the Census Commissioner, former UP CS Durga Shanker Mishra, former BPR&D chief Balaji Srivastava, economist Dr Shamika Ravi; Joint Secretary (Foreigners-I), MHA, is Member Secretary
• Was first announced by PM Modi in his Aug 15, 2025 Independence Day address as a "Demographic Mission"
• Notification attributes shifts not to normal fertility/mortality but to "illegal immigration, irregular population mobility and administrative laxity," especially in border districts, tribal regions and urban/industrial corridors
• Terms of reference: identify drivers (incl. illegal immigration, abnormal settlement, planned migration); analyse structural changes by religious/social communities
• Mandate to propose a "well-organized and permanent operational system" for legal, fair and time-bound identification, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants
• Suggests strengthening border management, population stabilisation and identification systems

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS1 Society — population & demographic issues; GS2 Polity — Centre-State coordination, governance; GS3 Internal Security — border management, illegal immigration

📝 Prelims Facts:

• Chair: Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar (Retd. SC judge)
• Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Home Affairs
• Census Commissioner of India is a statutory office under the Census Act, 1948
• BPR&D = Bureau of Police Research and Development (under MHA)

🔑 Key Term: Demographic Imbalance — Government's term for what it describes as "non-natural" population shifts in border/tribal regions, linked in official rhetoric to illegal immigration (esp. from Bangladesh)