By Bhupen Goswami

Guwahati : Congress veteran and party’s Assam in-charge Harish Rawat has warned the ruling BJP that NRC is an Assam-specific exercise and extending it to other parts of India without without proper study can boomerang on society. He underlined that lakhs of native Hindus and tribals have been left out of the register which has triggered which has triggered concern in the society. Harish Rawat urged the people of Assam to stand up for Assam and the Assam Accord. Addressing the media here in Guwahati, Harish Rawat said, “for those forces who believe in unity-in-diversity, should come together as it is time to stand for the state and Assam Accord.”

Harish Rawat also called upon the people of the state to take their stand against the autocratic government that has been ruling in Guwahati and in New Delhi. He also asked the people to vote for the Congress party and lead them to victory for all the four seats for the bye-elections.Terming the Modi government as ‘money-hungry’ and ‘power-hungry’, Rawat said that after the publication of NRC, the BJP has been trying to “divide the people and the society”. He also turned down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the increasing poverty. He said that the PM is focusing only on corporate houses. Rawat added, “India’s dismal rank in the Global Hunger Index has slipped to a rank of 102. In contrast to that, only 12 crores were below the poverty line in 2014 whereas, now it has gone up to 36 crores.” Rawat added that corporate houses are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. Moreover, the middle class and lower middle class are suffering the worst, Rawat said.Rawat said the verification exercise has been beneficial to the extent that it has demolished the BJP’s campaign that there were crores of Bangladeshi infiltrators residing in in Assam. He said only 19 lakh have been excluded from the NRC and the figure is likely to come down to 9-10 lakh after the completion of due process. Meanwhile, The Trinamool Congress has asked the BJP to issue a clarification on the exclusion of a large number of Hindus in the final National Register of Citizen (NRC) list in Assam.