The Higher Logic of Form 6

 This is a work of satire.

Imagine the following counterfactual but (just barely) conceivable situation. A public servant issues this statement: “I am a liar”. In a world of two-valued logic, any statement is either true or false—it does not allow for degrees of truth-status as in systems of fuzzy logic. In such a world, then, our (profoundly hypothetical) public servant is either (a) a liar, or (b) not a liar. 

If (a) he is a liar, the statement “I am a liar” must be a lie, and so he is not a liar; if (b) he is not a liar, the statement “I am a liar” must be true, and so he is a liar. Briefly, if he is a liar, he is not a liar; and if he is not a liar, he is a liar. This is known as the Liar Paradox. 

The Liar Paradox is frequently attributed to the Greek philosopher Eubulides (circa 500 B.C.) It is also attributed to the Indian grammarian Bhartrhari (circa 500 A.D.) It goes without saying that Eubulides plagiarised Bhartrhari, a proposition which can be established by an argument relating to Time Reversal and Retrocausality. 

But that is not the point. Perhaps the point is that the Liar Paradox lets our public servant off the hook, so that though we know what we know about him, we are prevented by Logic from readily agreeing with him, which is likely what would prompt him to issue the statement in the first place, assuming he would ever do so. 

Or again, the point might be just that of dropping a couple of names, like Eubulides and Bhartrhari, for what else is the point of a learned essay? One could also throw in Russell and his barber problem—“If the barber is the fellow who shaves all and only those that do not shave themselves, then who shaves the barber?” 

Consider also what is known as the ‘Paradox of Voting’, which has turned out to be a special case of Arrow’s ‘General (Im)Possibility Theorem’. Here, we are told that there are three voters 1,2 and 3, and three electoral candidates A, B and C. The winner will be decided by the Method of Majority Decision. 

Person 1 ranks the candidates in the order A, B, C; 2 in the order B, C, A; and 3 in the order C, A, B. Note now that a majority of the voters (1 and 3) prefer A to B, so A defeats B; a majority (1 and 2) prefer B to C, so B defeats C; and a majority (2 and 3) prefer C to A, so C defeats A. In sum, A defeats B defeats C defeats A…in an endless loop. 

A logician who taught at Oxford University in the mid-to-late 1800s worked on these sorts of voting paradoxes. His name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and he may have found it amusing to deal with such riddles and puzzles: this possibility is rendered likely by the fact that he also wrote some famous stories known for the weird logical conundrums in them. He wrote these stories under the name of Lewis Carroll. 

So now that we have some notion of a Paradox as some distinguished thing that traps you in a logical bind, let me come to the actual point of this note, which is that we do not have to go all the way back to Bhartrhari and some antiquated past to discover our Civilizational Contribution to the Philosophy of Paradox. We have done it as recently as 2026: we should be justly proud of the ‘Disqualified Voter’s Paradox (DVP)’, which is our ECI’s contribution to the world of ideas. Here is a version of the DVP.

The Election Commission of India has recently issued a direction to the country’s Chief Electoral Officers to undertake a special drive to enrol ‘left-out’ and first-time voters, who will be required to fill out Form 6. Imagine you have voted in an election before and that your name has now been deleted from the voters’ list because of the ‘logical discrepancy’ of there being less than 9 months between your age and that of a sibling of yours. It is actually not a logical discrepancy, it is just that your sibling happens to be a twin of yours, but how is the bot deciding on the legitimacy of your voter status to know that? So if you want to get back on the voters’ list, you now need to fill in Form 6, which is titled ‘Application Form for New Voters’. 

Form 6 requires you to complete a ‘Declaration’ which contains five clauses, of which clauses  (iii) and (v) are as follows: “… (iii) I am applying for inclusion in Electoral Roll for the first time and my name is not included in any Assembly Constituency/ Parliamentary Constituency… (v) I am aware that making the above statement or declaration in relation to this application which is false and which I know or believe to be false or do not believe to be true, is punishable under Section 31 of Representation of the People Act, 1950 (43 of 1950) with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with fine or with both.” 

Would you really be telling the truth by subscribing to clause (iii) of Form 6? While it is true that your ‘…name is not included in any Assembly Constituency/Parliamentary Constituency…’ (by virtue of your name having been deleted owing to an alleged ‘logical discrepancy’), it is not true that you are ‘…applying for inclusion in Electoral Roll for the first time…’. So if you sign the Declaration, you are risking the wages of perjury. 

In a Times of India report dated October 3, 2026 [1], an admired  former Chief Election Commissioner of India, Mr S. Y. Qureshi, is quoted as saying: “Form 6 can’t be filed by a deleted voter. It’s only for NEW voters. All those who have been forced to fill it have committed (a) criminal offence carrying 1 yr (year) prison (sic). EC officials who forced them are abettors to crime.” 

However benign the ECI’s gaze may be when it looks upon your completed Form 6, it is an unfortunate fact of logic that your only recourse for seeking redress is to claim clause (iii) of the Form, but if you do, you could wind up in jail. The ECI’s directive issued to its electoral officers in 2026 deserves to be commemorated by the year of its issue, as Catch-26. 

Some of us may recall that earlier celebrated Catch – Catch-22, due to the novelist Joseph Heller in his 1961 book of that name:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”   

Surely, our own Catch-26 deserves a respectful whistle or two, too? 

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that, properly speaking, paradoxes are not so much ‘resolved’ as ‘dissolved’, being products of linguistic quirks and artefacts divorced from practical import. If that is the case, there is hope yet. 

One could look forward to the matter being brought up in a Court of Law by an aggrieved ‘left-out’ voter, and a Learned Justice, familiar with the work of Wittgenstein, pronouncing: “The Problem cannot be resolved. It must be dissolved. The Problem is the pestilential petitioner, and the sentence of the Court is that the Problem be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, and that the Problem be there dissolved until properly dead. In sulphuric acid. It is the rarest of rare cases.”  

S. Subramanian is an economist who takes a sporadic interest in logic. 

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