Opinion: Why Demography Panel’s Religious Data Drive Is Crucial For India’s Future

Policymakers can use such detection to safeguard social welfare benefits, electoral rolls, and public distribution systems

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Demography rarely changes in one dramatic, invasive sweep. It changes over decades of ration card registrations, school enrolments, employment and electoral rolls infiltration, usurping of religious shrines and spaces.

So, when the High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC), chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, asked Indian states for 15 years of religion-wise data covering births, school enrolments, property deals, Aadhaar cards, and voter IDs, it was trying to do its job well. But that predictably did not make some non-BJP states happy, especially the ones ruled by parties whose politics hinge on the Muslim vote.

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The CPI(M) urged the Tamil Nadu government to boycott the committee and not respond to the 35-point questionnaire it had sent to the states.

In an X post, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh called it a “patently diabolical........

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