Logical discrepancy: Voters fret over passport-only solution
Times of India | 12 January 2026
Kolkata: Do you have a passport? If yes, your SIR hearing for logical discrepancy will be resolved in just 2 minutes. If you do not, be ready to face the hassle of hunting documents to convince the Election Commission of your citizenship. Many citizens fret over a passport as the only solution to their logical discrepancy.
Many electors who attended the SIR hearing to address their logical flaws feel that if the commission asked BLOs to upload their passport copies, they would not have faced document trouble and the subsequent hearing. However, those who do not have a passport are in a fix to satisfy the commission and prove their citizenship in Bengal.
"Thankfully, my passport was renewed in Oct. Otherwise, I would not be able to break the document jinx. I turned up at Jadavpur Vidyapith for the hearing as my BLO informed me to visit the venue with all documents that would suffice as my residential proof. I was worried because I already gave my BLO all the documents required to establish my residential and voter identity. Once I put my passport on the hearing table, I could walk out of the venue in a short while," said Amlan Dutta, a resident of Jodhpur Park and a private firm employee.
Jayesh Kumar Jha, head of surgical oncology at the SSKM Hospital, turned up for a hearing with his wife, Nidhi Dikshit, also a govt employee, at the Jessop Building recently for a mapping issue. "My name was not in the 2002 electoral roll. We submitted our passports, and the hearing finished in no time. During SIR hearing, the production of the original passport and submission of its signed Xerox copy was sufficient. I feel the EC should have made a provision for the BLO to do the same on the app when they visited an elector's home. If this was done, many people would have got respite from the hearing trouble and anxiety," he said.
Jha also pointed out that the EC can easily check the uploaded image of the passport and confirm the genuine data with the help of the passport authority.
Many hearing attendees said the documents they produced for making a passport were also submitted when BLOs sought them before serving the notice. However, the EC sought further clarity and called them for a hearing. Septuagenarian Subrata Gangopadhyay, a retired central govt employee, said, "I was not in the city, so I could not get my name enlisted in the 2002 SIR roll. The govt issued me a passport by checking my residential proof, Aadhaar, PAN card and Voter ID. These were given to the BLO, too, for uploading when my enumeration was marked with logical discrepancy. It seems that the EC did not believe those credentials and made me turn up for a hearing to check my passport. I found this ridiculous."