‘Logical discrepancy’ permitted in Bengal SIR as interim measure, legality yet to be decided: SC

The Supreme Court on Wednesday verbally remarked that the use of the “logical discrepancy” category during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls was permitted in West Bengal as an “interim arrangement” and that it was yet to decide on its legality, Live Law reported.

The Election Commission has been serving notices to crores of voters asking them to explain “logical discrepancies” to retain their names on the electoral rolls. Logical discrepancies refer to what the panel considers inconsistencies such as a mismatch with the spellings of names of the voters’ parents, an unreasonably low gap between the ages of parents and children or if parents have more than six children.

The court said that its May 27 judgement upholding the legality of the special intensive revision during the first phase of the exercise in Bihar could not be seen as a “binding precedent”, Live Law reported.

“Bihar is not a final determination of every question arising in these proceedings,” Bar and Bench quoted Justice Joymalya Bagchi as saying. “In Bihar, the Election Commission had not initially undertaken logical discrepancy as a category.”

A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant was hearing petitions alleging a lack of transparency in the issuing of notices to voters in Delhi during the ongoing special intensive revision.

Of the 97.5 lakh voters included in the...

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