West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | SC flags ‘logical discrepancy’ in voter list, backs right to vote

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday raised questions over the "logical discrepancy" list of doubtful voters, created by the Election Commission only for West Bengal, saying, "The right to vote in a country where you are born is something which is not only constitutional, it is sentimental."

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that the SIR in West Bengal has sandwiched voters between different constitutional authorities.

As senior advocate D S Naidu, for the EC, said that in West Bengal, judicial officers had rejected 47 per cent of cases they have adjudicated from the notices issued by the poll body, the bench said that this is not a fight between the State and the EC, nor a blame game, yet voters are being sandwiched between different constitutional authorities.

The bench also said that unless there is an enormous number of voters who are excluded, the election results cannot be interfered with.

"If 10 per cent of the electorate does not vote, and the winning margin is more than 10 per cent, then what will happen," the bench asked.

The bench further said, "Suppose the margin is 2 per cent, and 15 per cent of the mapped electorate could not vote, then maybe we are not expressing any opinion. But we would definitely have to apply our minds.

The court said that when it permitted the ECI to go into the issue of purity of electoral rolls, it was implicit in the original poll panel notification on SIR that the 2002 list would not be touched.

The court was hearing a writ petition by Quaraisha Yeasmin and others regarding the SIR, in which their names had been excluded from the electoral rolls.

The bench told the EC's counsel, "When the Bihar SIR was argued, submissions of EC was unequivocal that 2002 list members need not give any document. Please see your written submissions in the Bihar case. You said 2002 electorate need not give documents. But your logical discrepancy rejection touched people who relate to people in the 2002 list. 2002 list is the benchmark. Please ensure that you don't delete the 2002 list members in your final list."

Naidu replied people still have to prove that they are the same person as in the 2002 list. To this, the bench said, "Now you are improvising the submissions which you made earlier."

The court also observed that the purpose of the court must be enabling and not an adjudicatory exercise to decide who is right and who is wrong. He said the very spirit of the court’s hands-off approach, citing previous judgments, is that in each and every case, the courts have intervened to promote a fair election and not to interdict an election.

"Deploy officers where there was a trust deficit between the State and the constitutional entity. These judicial officers will undertake a verification, but [with] the volume they had to do; there was always a chance of error. Just consider, going through 1,000 documents a day. Speaking for myself, if the accuracy rate is 70 per cent, I'll rate the activity excellent. This is the pressure at which judicial officers have worked. There will always be a margin of error,” Justice Bagchi said.

The bench said it is essential to have a robust appellate forum.

"Somewhere, we are getting blinded by the dust and fury of an impending election. The right to remain on a roll, right to vote in a country where you are born is something which is not only constitutional, it is sentimental. It is the biggest expression of nationality and patriotism that you are in a participative process,'' the bench said.

Naidu said the EC has provided exclusion and inclusion statistics of all states subjected to SIR, and emphasised that West Bengal does not stand out in any manner.

The bench, however, said, “Logical discrepancy has not been a category in other states. We have examined Bihar, we have found not a single person was flagged on logical discrepancy."

Naidu said Bihar, too, has exclusions, and not even a single appeal was filed. The bench said, “For the appellate tribunal, this is not a competition between conflating or deflating electoral rolls. They have to hear it on the principles of inclusion.”

The petitioner’s counsel then said the EC was not even placing orders before the appellate tribunal headed by Chief Justice (Retired) T S Sivanganam, and urged the bench to extend the freezing of the electoral roll. In response, the bench asked the counsel to move the issue before the appellate tribunal.

The counsel then asked whether the appeals will be decided within a time frame. 

The bench asked if the counsel wanted it to put the former CJs and judges under pressure.

The bench finally declined to entertain the plea regarding the appeal listed before the appellate tribunal, and pointed out that the judicial officers had not recorded reasons for rejection, adding that it cannot doubt the judicial officers.

"Since the petitioners have already approached the appellate tribunals, in our considered view, the apprehensions expressed in the petition are premature. If the plea is allowed, then necessary consequences will follow,” the bench said while clarifying that it has not expressed any views on the merits of the plea.