Muslim population increasing in India because of ‘large-scale infiltration’, says Amit Shah

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said that the rise in India’s Muslim population was not due to fertility rates but because of “large-scale infiltration”.

Addressing a lecture on “Infiltration, Demographic Change and Democracy”, organised by Dainik Jagran, Shah said that the Muslim population in the country had “increased at a rate of 24.6%, while the Hindu population had decreased by 4.5%”.

“This decline is not due to the fertility rate but rather due to infiltration,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader said. “When India was partitioned, Pakistan was formed on both sides based on religion, which later split into Bangladesh and Pakistan… infiltration from both sides has led to such a significant change in the population.”

Shah said the disparity in population growth across religions observed in the census from 1951 to 2011 was primarily due to “infiltration”.

He added that his party had “adopted the three principles of Detect, Delete, and Deport” since the 1950s.

The BJP was formed in 1980, though it traces its roots to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh set up in 1951.

The home minister said that the BJP government will “identify infiltrators, make every effort to ensure their names are removed from the voter list, and subsequently work to deport them to their countries”.

The statement came against the...

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