Central committee reviews demographic shifts and undocumented settlements in J&K border districts

The presence of undocumented migrants — particularly Rohingya from Myanmar and irregular migrants from Bangladesh — in India's border regions is a long-standing security and governance concern. The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority rendered stateless by Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law, which excluded them from the country's 135 recognised national ethnicities. Successive waves of persecution, culminating in large-scale military clearance operations in Rakhine State, drove hundreds of thousands into Bangladesh and, through onward migration, into India. The Cox's Bazar settlement in Bangladesh became the world's largest refugee camp, and deteriorating conditions there have accelerated secondary movement into Indian territory.

Jammu and Kashmir occupies a particularly sensitive position in this context. As a Union Territory sharing international borders with Pakistan and in close proximity to Bangladesh-linked migration corridors through northeastern India, J&K's demographic composition has historically been a subject of political and security scrutiny. The abrogation of Article 370 and the reorganisation of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories in 2019 eliminated the Permanent Resident Certificate (PRC) regime — a domicile-based protection mechanism — making questions of who legally resides in the territory more administratively complex and politically charged.