It has been a colossal exercise in attempting to weed out illegal immigrants from Assam, an exercise that was always riddled in controversy and chaos. The National Register of Citizens or the NRC, aimed at identifying illegals, was published last Saturday after five years of being monitored by the Supreme Court. With its publication, it became even clearer that the whole exercise had been a colossal mess. Nearly two million people have been excluded in the final list, facing the possibility of being rendered stateless. And politically, it's a huge irony: the BJP which has championed the NRC and even called for it to be replicated across India, is today shocked that the final list has a large number of Bengali Hindus in it, they're convinced that the numbers from the high population Muslim areas are not accurate.