From PM Narendra Modi to the block-level leaders of the BJP are vocal against ‘infiltration’ and ‘conspiracy of demographic change’ in India again. Whenever there’s an election in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, or elsewhere, they come out with a microscope in their hands and start searching for the infiltrators. They find lakhs of ‘ghuspaithiya’ (intruders) and discover a ‘big conspiracy of creating instability in the country’. As elections in Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, and Kerala are knocking at the door, the BJP leaders are happy to return to their favourite plot, keeping anti-Pakistani slogans in semi-hibernating mode for a while.
Prime Minister Modi, in his Independence Day Speech, said, “I would like to alert the nation about a concern, a challenge. Under a well-thought-out conspiracy, country’s demography is being changed, seeds of a new crisis are being sown. Infiltrators are snatching away the livelihood of the youth of my country. Infiltrators are targeting the sisters and daughters of my country. This will not be tolerated. These infiltrators mislead innocent tribals and capture their land. The country will not tolerate this. When demographic change takes place in border areas, it causes a threat to national security… No country can hand it over to infiltrators…So, I would like to say that we have decided to start a ‘High-Power Demography Mission’.”
It is expected that anybody or any responsible political party that deals with serious questions like infiltration or demographic change should produce sufficient data in support of their claims. But the data highlighted by the RSS- BJP leaders is not only inconsistent, if not absurd, but evidently manufactured. Way back in 2002, Mr. Lalkrishna Advani, a front-ranking BJP leader and ex deputy PM, said that there were 2 crore infiltrators only in West Bengal. In other words, what he meant was that 25% of the then population of West Bengal (total population of the state was then 8.01 crores according to the 2001 census report). Could anybody take this count to be anything other than a fiction? In fact, the BJP leaders have been giving contradictory figures of ‘illegal immigrants’ in the country for quite some time. Someone is telling 2 crores, someone 5 crores, while some others are claiming that the number of intruders is as high as 10 crores. In his speeches on 15 August from the Red Fort in Delhi and on 22 August in Kolkata, PM Modi reiterated that infiltrators are a great threat to India. However, he did not mention any particular number. But Shubhendu Adhikari, the BJP legislator and the leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, claimed that there are 70 lakh Rohingya refugees in the state. But fact is that the total number of Rohingya people, severely persecuted and forcibly uprooted from Rakhine in Myanmar, their home and hearth for centuries, by the ruling junta, are now a stateless group of around 10 lakhs only. They are virtually struggling to survive. Any person with a minimum humanitarian value should empathize with the utterly distressed Rohingya people who after being driven out from Myanmar fled mainly to Bangladesh, also as well as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and even India. And according to official figure, Rohingya refugees in India are about 40 thousand, and among them, about 1,000 to 1,200 are now staying in West Bengal. So, wherefrom has the figure of 70 lakhs has been collated!
Why this forging of data?
Senior BJP figures like Home Minister Amit Shah and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma frequently cite infiltration as a national threat, pointing out demographic shifts and alleging complicity of the non-BJP government of West Bengal in understating the figure. But when one turns to the official figures, the story is different. For example, in 2024, an affidavit to the Jharkhand High Court from the Union Home Ministry contradicted claims from state BJP members about massive Bangladeshi infiltration causing a demographic imbalance, stating that it was still being assessed if any demographic decline was due to migration. In 2016, the Ministry of Home Affairs cited 2 crore (20 million) illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India in a response to a query in the Lok Sabha, but then quickly retracted the figure, stating it was based on older estimates and official data was unavailable.
This stands in contrast to the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2023 report, released in late September 2025, which cites only 2,290 cases registered under the relevant foreigners and passport acts. West Bengal had the most cases, but the numbers are small compared to the political rhetoric.
In July 2025, Shubhendu Adhikari claimed that 1.25 crore illegal immigrants and Rohingyas were present in the state’s voter list. He advocated for a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to address the issue. But in December 2024, the same Shubhendu Adhikari had stated that the BSF had apprehended 1,454 Bangladeshi nationals in 2023 and 1,728 in 2024 (as of December 15). Why such wide mismatches in figures? Because there is an inherent ulterior motive. Most of the Rohingyas profess Islam though some are Hindus as well. So anti-Rohingya tirade synchronizes with the anti-Muslim hatred spread by the RSS-BJP in keeping with their arch communal Hindutva doctrine. Secondly, when the Indian people are reeling under abject poverty, soaring price line, mounting unemployment, absence of means of earning, nonavailability of rudimentary healthcare and education and absenteeism of safety and security in every sphere of life, a large scale propaganda that illegal intruders (and that too Muslims) are depriving the bona fide Indians from jobs and other amenities of life conduces the attempt of the ruling dispensation to shield the reality and distract people’s attention from the real cause of their hardship. It was with this intention that the ruling BJP and its cohorts moved heaven and earth over the NRC exercise, branded every Bengali-speaking Muslim citizen of the country as ‘foreigners’ and precipitated a discord between the Assamese-speaking people and the Bengali-speaking communities.
How many foreigners did the EC find in Bihar after the SIR?
Now with assembly elections in Bihar followed by some other states including West Bengal are in the offing, the issue of intrusion has been brought to the surface with much noise. And to justify the weird claim of large infiltration and the intruders managing to include their names on the voters’ list, an exercise named ‘Special Intensive Revision’ (SIR) was undertaken in Bihar by the Election Commission, evidently pliable to the dictates of the BJP government. Similar exercise will be repeated in other states also. Now a look into the findings
In the final SIR list, hardly any intruder has been detected. In the latest data issued by the National Crime Records Bureau shows that only five cases pertaining to the ‘Foreigners and Passport Acts’ were registered in the State in 2023. The number of such cases in 2022 and 2021 stood at three and one, respectively. So, the claim of presence of lakhs of ‘Bangladeshi’ and Rohingya voters in the electoral list proved to be a farce only. Even, among the 68.5 lakh names deleted from the voter list, the Election Commission did not spell out any number of foreign illegal immigrants. Once again, the bubble of much touted story of infiltration has burst.
BJP finds ‘foreign threat’ before every election
Raising a bogey of infiltration and ‘demographic change’ has become a convenient ploy of the BJP to manipulate election. Before the assembly election in Jharkhand in November 2024, the rhetoric of illegal intrusion had become a central part of the BJP’s campaign. Since the formation of the state of Jharkhand in 2000, the BJP had been in power for 17 years. But they never raised this issue at that time. But when the JMM came to power in the state, they found that Jharkhand is filled with Bangladeshis who are entering through Malda of West Bengal, a border district, and marrying the Santhal women, thus bringing a demographic change in the state. The Assam BJP Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also added that ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’ are a threat to national security besides a growing menace to Jharkhand. But the people are saying, “If this was such a big issue, why didn’t they raise it all this time? Health and education are the big issues that need to be spoken about. If they are so invested in infiltration, then what have they done about it?” (The Wire, 17 Nov. 2024)
How can infiltration take place despite guarded borders?
Point is if the borders are secured with para-military forces, how can there be mass scale infiltration? If the BJP’s version is correct, then it is to be assumed that the ‘Border Security Force’ posted at the border areas is either inactive or in connivance with illegal trespassers. If this question is asked to the BJP leaders, they have two ready-made replies. One, the TMC-led West Bengal government is allowing illegal immigrants to strengthen its vote bank and two, the illegal intruders are using the unfenced border between India and Bangladesh. As of February 2025, approximately 864 km of the India-Bangladesh border remained unfenced. Bangladesh was created in 1971. 55 years have rolled by since then. Why have not those borders been secured with barbed wire till now? Secondly, is it that borders without fence are not under surveillance of Indian paramilitary force? Moreover, Indian army boasts of possessing latest sophisticated military hardware. Is it that those are not sophisticated enough to prevent illegal ingress by foreigners?
Is it possible to enter the country in droves across the border?
This shows that infiltration is not an issue of posed concern but a tool to polarize people along religious line, precipitate disharmony and suspicion among the various communities of Indian people and thereby consolidate Hindu vote bank to cross the stygian ferry of election. Deliberately fighting shy of the real problems wreaking havoc in people’s life, the BJP leaders, much to the glee of their masters, the ruling monopolists, are creating hype over non-issues like infiltration, foreign aggression, eulogy of Hindutva, surpassing the number of 80% Hindus by 17% Muslims in the near future and so forth. And hence they have arrogated to themselves the right to harass Muslim people on various grounds, provoking them by attacking their places of worship, falsely implicating them as illegal migrants, lynching them on flimsy pretexts like cow vigilantism, banning them from running shops in the streets through which Hindu pilgrims pass during certain religious festivals, bulldozing their dwelling places, imprisoning them at detention centres and forcibly pushing them to neighbouring Bangladesh. Are all these acts approved by the code of humanity? Or these are marks of bestial mindset, inhumanity, intimidating outlook and peddling in utter falsehood to secure seat of power typical of any fascist autocratic regime in the present era.
