After the near-elimination of Maoism from India in March 2026, India is faced with another major security threat. The threat of illegal immigration is a silent hazard with major security implications for India. The economic implications of illegal immigration are well-known, particularly when it puts a serious strain on the existing fiscal resources. The security threat inherent in illegal immigration has already acquired political overtones. Here lies the risk of it degenerating into a nationwide security threat, much like Maoism. Therefore, after eliminating Maoism, the time has come for a decisive action against illegal immigration in India.
Illegal immigration is defined as the act of entering or residing in another country without legal authority, violating that country’s immigration laws. This is done by crossing borders clandestinely and using fraudulent documents to prove your citizenship. Sometimes, staying after a valid visa has expired is also illegal immigration, but such numbers in the Indian context are negligible. But when the state administration becomes a party to facilitate illegal immigration for vote bank politics, then it creates serious economic and security concerns for India.
Post-independence, a major influx took place in the 1971 Liberation War, and it is estimated that nearly one crore people from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) took refuge in India. Most of these refugees did not return to their homeland. Unfortunately, migration from Bangladesh continued into India, particularly in the states of Assam and West Bengal, throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It is believed that such illegal immigration had the political patronage of the Congress government, then in power both at the Centre and in the states.
In the last decade, there has been illegal immigration from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and more recently, of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. The exact figures of illegal immigration are not easy to estimate because most of the illegal immigrants manage to get citizenship/identification documents like birth certificates, Aadhaar cards, etc., in connivance with the local authorities. During my military career, I have served in Assam, West Bengal, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. I can say with conviction that Assam, West Bengal and all the North Eastern states have considerable illegal migrants. As per one estimate, the overall figure of illegal migrants in India could be upwards of 1.3 crore.
In the last five years, India has intensified its ‘Detect, Detain and Deport’ policy against illegal immigrants. The success rate is lower because of the local political patronage. The focus obviously is to detect foreign nationals from Bangladesh and Myanmar because such illegal migrants may pose a serious security threat to India. There is a tendency to politicise the strict action of the government against illegal immigration, citing it as an action against the Muslim minority, particularly by the West Bengal TMC government. In West Bengal, the state government has not yet allotted 569 km of the Indo-Bangladesh border for fencing. Obviously, the aim of such a large stretch of unfenced border is to facilitate vote bank politics of the ruling dispensation in West Bengal.
My worry is that many of these illegal migrants may not be just because of the economic and political distress in Bangladesh and Myanmar. With the type of impeccable documentation available to the illegal immigrants, it is feasible that many of them have penetrated into the state police, paramilitary and even armed forces. It is known that both Pakistan and China plant their agents in India, and I firmly believe that they facilitate such agents through illegal means. With so much sensitive information available through the local agents, our adversaries get an undue advantage in a war or a conflict situation.
Such illegal immigration makes our vulnerable sectors, like the Siliguri Corridor, even more exposed to the enemy threat in conflict situations. The inimical agents can disrupt the movement of troops to the borders by rail and road and delay the logistics supply by blowing key bridges on the highways and major arteries of communication. From the terrorism perspective, a large number of illegal immigrants can act as Over Ground Workers for the terrorist groups and can provide material/moral support to the terror outfits. Then, there is always a threat of a ‘lone wolf’ in terrorism. Such a person is difficult to identify and is invariably beyond the radar of intelligence agencies.
At the strategic level, there is a threat of the ‘Greater Bangladesh’ concept. It is believed that Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and allied Islamist groups have promoted the idea of Greater Bangladesh through demographic change through illegal immigration from Bangladesh. They believe that with demographic shift in states like West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya, there is a scope to create a Greater Bangladesh of the size and population equal to Pakistan. The idea of Greater Bangladesh gained traction during the interim government of Bangladesh led by Mohamad Yunus. Thus, strict action against massive illegal immigration in India is an urgent security imperative.
The immediate concern should be to check and contain illegal immigration, particularly from Bangladesh and Myanmar. In Assam, we have witnessed a considerable decline in illegal migration under the BJP government in the last decade. Thus, it is possible to contain the influx of foreign nationals into our states, like West Bengal, which has emerged as a major hub of illegal immigration. As West Bengal votes for Phase 1 on 23 April and Phase 2 on 29 April, the genuine citizens of the state should know that their very existence is at stake. The challenge of illegal immigration in India, particularly in West Bengal, has assumed serious security implications for the nation. The Government of India has no choice but to tackle it with firm resolve and decisive action, as exhibited in the elimination of Maoism from India.
