Illegal migration

Scale, routes and drivers

Estimates of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India range from lakhs to crores depending on source and method — no reliable count exists, which itself is part of the problem. Movement occurs across the porous, riverine 4,096 km border: unfenced stretches, chars and river channels, and through agents who provide forged documents. Drivers are economic (wages, land), environmental (river erosion, climate stress in Bangladesh) and social (networks of earlier migrants).

From Myanmar, the flow is different in character: ethnic Kuki-Chin and Rohingya fleeing persecution and, since the 2021 coup, civil war. Manipur and Mizoram host tens of thousands of Myanmar nationals; Mizoram has sheltered them on ethnic-kinship grounds despite the Centre's deportation stance, creating a centre-state friction unique to this border.

• No reliable count of illegal migrants exists — estimates vary wildly.
• Bangladesh flow: economic and environmental drivers; agent networks.
• Myanmar flow: persecution and civil war since 2021.
• Mizoram's sheltering of Chin refugees defies the Centre's line.

The legal and institutional framework

India's framework is archaic and fragmented. The Foreigners Act 1946 — a wartime colonial law — makes illegal entry a criminal offence and places the burden of proof on the individual. Foreigners Tribunals (quasi-judicial bodies, concentrated in Assam) adjudicate citizenship disputes. The Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act 1983, which made detection harder in Assam, was struck down by the Supreme Court in Sarbananda Sonowal v. Union of India (2005) as unconstitutional — the Court famously called illegal migration 'external aggression' by other means.

The CAA 2019 amended the Citizenship Act 1955 to give persecuted non-Muslim minorities from three countries a path to citizenship, while critics argue its religion-based selection violates Article 14; the matter is before the Supreme Court. The proposed nationwide NRC remains politically fraught. India lacks a refugee law, so Rohingya, Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils and Afghans are treated under ad hoc arrangements — Tibetans and Sri Lankan Tamils receive protection; Rohingya are treated as illegal migrants.

• Foreigners Act 1946: burden of proof on the individual.
• IMDT Act struck down in Sarbananda Sonowal (2005).
• CAA 2019: religion-selective fast-track citizenship; under judicial challenge.
• No refugee law: protection is ad hoc and group-specific.

Assam: the laboratory of migration politics

Assam is where migration became India's most explosive internal security issue. The Assam Agitation (1979-85), led by students against 'foreigners', ended with the Assam Accord fixing 24 March 1971 (Bangladesh's liberation) as the detection cut-off. Implementation stalled for decades until the Supreme Court-monitored NRC update (2013-19), which excluded 19.06 lakh of 3.3 crore applicants. The list satisfied no one: those excluded faced statelessness; agitation leaders called the count too low; the state government sought re-verification.

The NRC experience exposed the traps of documentation-based citizenship in a poor, flood-prone state where documents are lost and names spelled inconsistently. Detention centres for declared foreigners, and the spectre of mass statelessness, drew international concern. Assam's lesson for national policy: detection without a deportation agreement — Bangladesh does not accept these people as its nationals — creates a permanent population in legal limbo.

• Assam Accord 1985: 24 March 1971 cut-off.
• NRC 2019: 19.06 lakh exclusions; final list unresolved.
• Bangladesh does not accept deportees — statelessness risk.
• Documentation-based citizenship punishes the poor most.

Security dimensions and the way forward

The security concerns are real but specific: demographic change altering electoral politics in border districts; forged documents (Aadhaar, voter ID) creating identity fraud; land encroachment and forest degradation; communal tension; and the use of migration channels by traffickers and, occasionally, militants. These are law-and-order and governance problems more than military ones — the migrants themselves are overwhelmingly poor workers.

A durable policy needs: a modern immigration and refugee law replacing the 1946 Act; work-permit or registration systems that regularise economic migration while keeping security screening; completion of border fencing and riverine surveillance; bilateral readmission arrangements with Bangladesh; and a clear, humanitarian-consistent policy on Myanmar refugees. Political honesty matters most: migration has been both exaggerated for electoral mobilisation and minimised for convenience, and policy built on either distortion fails.

• Core concerns: demography, document fraud, land, communal tension.
• Migrants are mostly economic workers — a governance issue, not invasion.
• Needed: modern immigration law, registration, readmission agreements.
• Political exaggeration and denial both distort policy.

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