The National Register of Citizens (NRC), the final updated version of citizenship records in Assam, will be published on August 31 “irrespective of who likes it or who doesn’t”, as the Supreme Court put it last week. But for a large number of people—out of a rough estimate of around four million expected to be stripped of their Indian citizenship—it will only reboot a long-drawn-out process that has haunted them for years. For those who call themselves khilonjiya or native Assamese, the final NRC should have meant a closure to the single-most important issue for the state—illegal immigration. For the so-called neutral observers in this great game, it’s a humanitarian crisis of immense magnitude, an alleged witch-hunt by a right-leaning government against the Muslim community.