Syed Ali Mujtaba
The Ministry of Home Affairs Resolution on the High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC) on May 26, 2026, to scientifically study abnormal population shifts and illegal immigration across India is highly disturbing. It serves agenda of hatred and is a threat to the country.
As per report the Union government seeks religion wise data for the past 15 years on birth, vehicle registration, school enrolment, property transaction along with district wise details of religious structure and unusual increase in Adhar and voter ID registration.
Such details are totally unwarranted as it smacks of CAA, NCR mechanism and yet another assault on the citizenship issue. The moot point is it does not serve any purpose and is an indirect attempt to segregate people and further marginalize the Indian Muslims. Such an attempt goes against the basic structure of the constitution of India.
The shocking thing about this is that the Union Government has announced that a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge will frame the questioner seeking above information and send it to the state governments that in turn will forward it to the district heads.
The state governments will face the daunting task in collecting the details, called by the demographic panel because they do not maintain any such a record that is based on religion.
What’s warranted is that the state governments must categorically inform the demographic panel that it is impossible for them to respond to quires aimed at maintaining records based on religion, which effectively segregate people from people.
The central issue is not the concern about the difficulty in collecting the data; instead the concern is the necessity of such information within a secular framework of India?
The other intriguing part of the HLCDC questioner is asking for intelligence assessments and commission report on religious conversion within schedule Tribe communities. This is totally unrelated to the community development ideas of the government.
The Citizens’ Amendment Act of 2019 (CAA) which established a religion based pathway to citizenship, directly contravened the constitution of India. Despite widespread public resistance, the government suppressed the dissent through coercion and proceeded with is implementation.
A similar diabolic design seems to be in the offing making of the demographic questioner ready to be sent to target the Indian Muslims.
The demographic panel’s questioner is sure to ignite the latent fire burning in the hearts of Saheen Bagh protestors. This is because such questioner serves to advance an agenda of the BJP that’s aimed at transforming the secular nature of Indian state into a theocratic state.
Since the BJP cannot change the preamble of the constitution it’s through the demographic panel’s questionnaire the current dispensation wants to modify the basic structure of the Constitution.
By classifying citizens according to religious affiliation, the Demographic panel effectively erodes India’s secular character as mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution.
The constitution of India established the government, and the governments can function only in accordance with the vision and provisions of the constitution.
If that’s the case the citizens have to decide if they want to uphold the provisions of the Constitution of India or they want to implement the Hindutva agenda of the BJP.
It’s obvious the intention of the BJP government is to create a fear among the Muslim community.
Such a move if implemented will be in total disregard to the vision and provision of the constitution. It does not align with the mandate of the people, specifically with its preamble and the Directive principals of the state policy.
The questioner issued by the HLCDC violates the vision of the constitution. It looks like an extension of the CAA and NCR that created havoc in the country. This activity of the government has to be nipped in the bud.
Syed Ali Mujtaba is a senior journalist. Views expressed in this article is his personal