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With the National Register of Citizens draft list leaving out 40 lakh applicants, a big political row has erupted in the country. While BJP has defended the NRC exercise with party president Amit Shah calling it the soul of the 1985 Assam Accord to identify illegal migrants, Congress has criticised the process saying that genuine citizens have been left out. Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress head and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has alleged that the exercise has been carried out to divide people. Political parties are formulating their respective positions on NRC with an eye on the next Lok Sabha elections. The Assam-specific exercise is perfect for more widespread dog-whistle signalling. For example, BJP clearly plans to politically cash in on the issue by projecting itself as the party that finally took decisive action against illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators. The subtext here is that Muslim migrants from neighbouring countries have no place in India. This was underlined by Amit Shah himself as he reiterated that changes were being made to the Citizenship Act for Hindu and Sikh refugees. Congress, while critical of NRC, finds it hard to dissociate itself from the Assam Accord that Rajiv Gandhi had signed. Hence the party's recourse to technical flaws of the exercise in the hope of appealing to both for and against NRC constituencies. And Trinamool's forceful rejection of NRC positions it as a party for the aggrieved particularly Bengali speaking Muslims in Assam and Bengal. Adding to the politicking is the fact that the final NRC list is expected by the end of the year close to the tentative Lok Sabha poll schedule. Notably, none of the parties have spoken about solutions for those who will be left out of the final NRC. If Trinamool genuinely cared, why is Bengal among the worst defaulters in NRC verification, returning only 6% of the documents sent to it for authentication? Similarly, the Supreme Court which is overseeing the exercise and has said no coercive action should be taken based on the draft list should have been more proactive in preventing anomalies. Taken together, the NRC has become a convenient political tool. Bengal BJP has now proposed an NRC for that state should it come to power there. Such proposals have no legal basis and only aim to whip up hysteria. The people, as usual, remain the political football. With the National Register of Citizens draft list leaving out 40 lakh applicants, a big political row has erupted in the country. While BJP has defended the NRC exercise with party president Amit Shah calling it the soul of the 1985 Assam Accord to identify illegal migrants, Congress has criticised the process saying that genuine citizens have been left