Logical discrepancy is a malady that seems to have afflicted some of the highest echelons of the Indian state. One is not talking of those institutions that are run by politicians whose professional lingo is necessarily riddled with contradictions, obfuscation and opacity. They have to manage a variety of constituencies with opposed and frequently changing claims and so cannot afford to be too precise or consistent.But that is not a burden that the judiciary at the highest level or the Election Commission have to shoulder. People definitely expect them to be unbiased, consistent and demonstrably unaffected by the prevailing political winds. Unfortunately, both of these institutions have failed the people of West Bengal in carrying out the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls before the forthcoming assembly election on April 23 and 29.The term ‘logical discrepancy’ was invented by the Election Commission this time specifically for the revision exercise in West Bengal. It was not used in the recent SIR process in Bihar or Gujarat or Uttar Pradesh or indeed ever before in the history of Indian elections. Its specific meaning gradually emerged through a bewildering series of instructions to Booth Level Officers (BLO) over several weeks, beginning November 2025.Those voters whose names were on the 2002 electoral rolls, which is when the last SIR was carried out, were deemed to be eligible for inclusion in the new rolls. Those who were not had to be “mapped” to the 2002 rolls through a relative, preferably the father, the claim being supported by suitable documents. Those not in either of those two categories were required to apply as new voters.When voters not on the 2002 rolls were sent notices, they duly appeared with their bunch of documents, laboriously compiled and duplicated, for their scheduled hearing. But they were seldom told why their responses detailed in the Enumeration Form were found unsatisfactory. All they had to do was submit their documents and wait for the verdict of the process of adjudication of their cases.The true import of the term ‘logical discrepancy’ was discovered when the final list of eligible voters was published on April 6 and 9. A total of 90.82 lakh voters had been removed from the list of voters during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Of these, nearly 65 lakh had died or shifted or were absent or found to be duplicate voters. Among those who were under adjudication, around 27 lakh were found ineligible: they were given the option of appealing to a tribunal that was to be set up soon. After adjudication, 33 lakh were found eligible and their names were added to the new voters’ list.It now transpires that a large number of those who were found ineligible fell into the logical discrepancy trap because their names were spelt differently across their own documents. As it happens, there is no standard form of transcribing Bengali or Arabic-Persian names into Roman script. The same name can easily appear in different spellings. This is particularly the case for those who do not have the requisite literacy to fill out their own forms and so have to rely on others.Also read: What the Patterns of Exclusion for Muslim, Scheduled Caste and Urban Voters SayThe local media in the state is replete with stories of voters excluded from the list because Maqbul Sheikh is also described as Shekh Mokbul in some of his documents, Anil Mukherjee is called Anil Mukhopadhyay in his university certificate, or Anwar Ali is also known as Anwar Molla. Yakub Hosen had added an honorific Haji to his name recently.Many women changed their surnames after marriage, hence their early documents don’t match later ones. Thus, Shikha Sen found herself excluded presumably because she was Shikha Dasgupta on her school-leaving certificate.A particularly weird rule of logical discrepancy flagged all cases where more than five voters claimed the same father. It is hardly uncommon for people, especially from an earlier generation, to have six or more siblings. Not surprisingly, numerous cases were reported of some members of a large family being left out of the list for this reason.Any person familiar with the local language and cultural practices could have sorted out these problems without much difficulty. But the new technocracy that has taken over the machineries of the state decided that would be too slow and arbitrary a process. It decided to have a software designed for the purpose that would take the matter out of the hands of untrustworthy local officials and identify all logical discrepancies through a centralised digital process.Unfortunately, the software could not be endowed with the requisite cultural common sense. Hence, the massive errors of judgment that have left lakhs of genuine voters without the right to vote.Chief Justice Surya Kant expressed dismay in a recent Supreme Court hearing at the hullabaloo that was being raised in West Bengal over the SIR. The same exercise had been carried out in other states with no fuss at all. Why this agitation in Bengal? The reason is not far to seek. There has been a sustained clamour in certain political circles about the millions of illegal migrants from Bangladesh who have allegedly flooded the border districts of West Bengal and gained the protection of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) by acquiring voter cards and voting en masse for that party.The SIR exercise in that state was not merely about deleting deceased or absent or duplicate voters but identifying non-citizens who must not have the right to vote. The goal was explicitly announced by top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in the Union goverment and in the state, one of whom declared that one crore Muslim infiltrators would be removed from the voters’ list.The same goal was implicitly acknowledged in the unique steps taken by the Election Commission to rigorously check the papers of all of those who were not on the last SIR list in 2002. All of them were presumed to be non-voters until they were found eligible under the new operations. The fact that large numbers of such voters had in fact voted in elections after 2002 was of no importance because – who knows? – they could have shown forged documents or exercised political pressure to get themselves into the electoral roll.As a result, the SIR in West Bengal has been widely seen as an official exercise to determine citizenship. Hence the incredible panic and anxiety in every section of society, irrespective of religion, language or class. It was not just about not being able to vote, but losing one’s place in society, having to move around with a dubious identity.Also read: West Bengal SIR Reveals Border Adjudication Surge and Steep Urban DeletionsThere was the spectre of Assam – of tribunal hearings, internment camps, deportation. Those away from home travelled long distances to attend hearings and file their papers. The aged and the infirm spent hours queueing up. Many fell ill doing so. Indeed, there were quite a few reports of deaths caused by stress and even a few suicides from mental agony. Many people complained not just of the harassment but the ignominy of having to go through a process like this only to prove who they were.The Supreme Court was approached with complaints almost from the beginning of the SIR exercise. A major complaint was that the Aadhaar card was not being accepted as a valid proof of identity or address. The court ruled that the Aadhaar card would be accepted along with at least one of eleven other identity documents. Then there were mounting complaints about BLOs, who were mostly state government employees and school teachers on deputation, succumbing to pressure from the ruling TMC party.On February 20, the Supreme Court intervened to take note of the “trust deficit” between the state government and the Election Commission and request the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to spare some 600 former and serving district judges to take over all logical discrepancy cases from BLOs and decide on them without interference from political authorities.The pressure on BLOs as well as judicial officers was enormous. They were asked to do a job they had never done before under the constant glare of public scrutiny. BLOs were required to upload all documents submitted by voters through an app downloaded on their personal mobile phones; their phone numbers were circulated among thousands of people in the neighbourhood.It is now clear that, faced with the pressure, most of these officers adopted that time-tested tactic of the Indian bureaucracy – avoid responsibility by sending the file upstairs to be dealt with by a higher authority. Hence, the huge number of cases “under adjudication” that landed with the judicial officers. The latter were under pressure to complete their job by April 6 and 9 when the electoral rolls had to be “frozen” according to the announced schedule of elections to be held on 23 and 29 April.In their hurry, many judicial officers apparently did not put down the reasons for deleting names or did so perfunctorily.Justice Joymalya Bagchi acknowledged the problem when the matter was raised in the Supreme Court at its most recent hearing on April 13. He said that, given the circumstances, if the officers had decided 70% of cases correctly, that would be a good achievement. But appellate tribunals had been set up to take care of all errors. They must be allowed to do their job.When it was argued that the thirteen petitioners who had approached the court had all submitted their valid passports as proof of citizenship and were still marked ineligible, the judges replied that they should go to the tribunals for redress. When it was suggested that those who had appealed to the tribunal be allowed to vote in the forthcoming election, pending the result of their appeal, Chief Justice Surya Kant was brusque: “What is the question of allowing them to vote?” he asked. “If we allow this, then let us stop the voting rights of people who are included then.”Even the most imaginative logician will be hard put to it to find a logical connection between the question and the subsequent statement.In the end, the court expressed its unwillingness to put any pressure on the appellate tribunals and ruled that those who were not included in the final electoral roll already published would not be able to vote in the forthcoming election. In a later written order issued on 16 April, the earlier verbal order was modified to say that those whose appeals were upheld by the tribunals by April 21 and 27 could vote in the two phases of the election on April 23 and 29.Nineteen appellate tribunals have been formed with retired high court judges but it is unclear if they have actually begun their work. It is also not known how many of the 27 lakh voters found ineligible after adjudication have appealed so far.But if, let us say, 10 lakh do appeal, a simple calculation shows that nineteen judges deciding a hundred appeals a day would take 526 working days to finish the job. That works out to more than two years! In any case, it is certain that only a handful of cases will be decided in time for the successful appellants to vote in these elections. Plus, now that a great deal hangs on decisions made in the next few days, there will be complaints about which appeals were being taken up first.Has anyone realised the enormity of the mess in which the Election Commission and the courts have landed the people of West Bengal? The elections will go through as planned at the end of this month. But lakhs of voters, a large part of whom have thoroughly credible proof of their eligibility, will go without voting rights for at least a couple of years, if not longer.As mentioned before, it is no longer just a question of taking part in elections. Already, there are reports of employers telling workers that they may be dismissed if their names were deleted from the voters’ list. Someone who works as a domestic help has been told that a sanctioned housebuilding loan was being cancelled because she was no longer an eligible voter. There is little doubt that such stories will multiply in the next few days.The sensible course would surely have been for the court to allow those whose appeals were pending before the tribunals to vote in these elections on the ground that they were present in the 2024 electoral roll and must be presumed to be eligible voters until the adjudication process finally decides that they are ineligible. That would have been both practical and fair. It would have put no pressure on the tribunals, which could have done their job with care and responsibility. It would not have taken away the voting rights of lakhs of voters because of an ill-conceived and badly botched bureaucratic operation. But does anyone care?Also read: SIR: In Nearly Half of Bengal’s Assembly Seats, Deletions Outnumber 2024 Winning MarginsDespite its reluctance to open up the frozen voters’ list, the Supreme Court did make four exceptions. Two of these concerned persons who had been nominated by their political parties to contest the election but could not do so because their cases were lying with the appellate tribunal. The court requested the tribunal to conduct an expedited hearing which was done and their documents were found to be in order.The other two were Suprabuddha Sen, grandson of the renowned artist Nandalal Bose, and his wife Deepa. Their case was widely reported, highlighting the fact that Nandalal Bose supervised the illustration of the original copy of the Indian Constitution, bearing the signatures of all the members of the Constituent Assembly. Expressing his satisfaction at being declared a valid voter, Sen was gracious enough to express sympathy for the lakhs of others who did not have the wherewithal to approach the Supreme Court.Analysts have pointed out that the highest number of names removed from the previous voters’ list are from seven border districts adjoining Bangladesh and that the proportion of Muslims and women among the excluded is much larger than their share in the population. This has led to predictable political reactions. One side is claiming that the SIR had deliberately targeted Muslims and women, who are known to vote in large numbers for the TMC. The other side is insisting that the SIR has indeed successfully removed infiltrators and, if others have been put into some difficulty, that is a price that must be paid.But the BJP, too, has seen thousands of its supporters among Hindu refugees from Bangladesh belonging to the Matua community having their names deleted because they did not have the right documents. It is unclear how much the SIR deletions will actually make a difference to the election results. Justice Bagchi did hint at the possible fallout of a narrow winning margin in a constituency where a large number of voters had been excluded. “Suppose the margin of victory is only 2 per cent,” he suggested hypothetically, “and 15 per cent of the electorate could not vote, then maybe we have to apply our mind.”Anyone who has observed West Bengal elections recently will know that the number of booths where deleted voters may exceed the winning margin could run into hundreds. Every losing candidate will doubtless approach the court with a demand for a repoll. Will the Supreme Court agree? If it does, who will be eligible to vote in the repoll? One cannot imagine the scale and complexity of the disputes that will arise.What began with logical discrepancies has ended up in an ethical quagmire. The Election Commission and the Supreme Court are custodians of the Indian citizen’s constitutional right to vote. The first big misstep in West Bengal was the Election Commission’s resolve to carry through what was essentially a citizenship test in the space of four months.The second misstep was to treat all those not present in the 2002 list as non-voters who must prove afresh their claim to be legitimate voters, despite the fact that they were present on later lists. This led to the series of administrative bungles over checking documents, designing the software, supervising BLOs and collaborating with the state government. The court, for all its good intentions, could only make piecemeal interventions that, in the end, produced new complications. The result is that lakhs of genuine voters are left without the right to vote in the foreseeable future.Partha Chatterjee is a political scientist whose latest book is For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State (2025).