CPI(M) urges Tamil Nadu government to boycott High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) has called on the Tamil Nadu government to withdraw from participation in a High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes set up by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. In a statement on Friday, CPI(M) State secretary P. Shanmugam strongly denounced the panel's move, arguing that the 35-point questionnaire it has devised reveals a clear anti-minority agenda orchestrated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The CPI(M) claims that the formation of this extra-legal committee, which seeks to gather data while the official Census remains unresolved, signifies the BJP's malevolent intentions. They further assert that the committee's primary objective is driven by political motives, as it solicits religion-based information from states concerning school enrollments, land transfers, and religious conversions among tribal communities.

Specifically, Shanmugam highlighted that the committee's endeavor to collect religious details of voters who have been removed from electoral rolls, without even consulting a demographer, clearly exposes the BJP's true intentions. He emphasized that in order to protect state autonomy, the Tamil Nadu government must reject the committee's questionnaire, openly oppose its intentions, and refuse to provide any data to the panel.