Fourth judge resigns from Bengal SIR Tribunal in a month; 15 members remain now

Kolkata: Former Calcutta High Court judge Biswajit Basu resigned from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) Tribunal on Saturday, becoming the fourth member to step down from the panel constituted to hear appeals from voters excluded during the electoral roll revision in West Bengal.

Basu cited personal reasons for his decision. He conveyed his resignation in a letter to Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Ravindra Vithalrao Ghuge. His exit comes days after former Justice Indrajit Chatterjee quit the tribunal, citing the distance he had to travel to attend its office.

Chatterjee had said that commuting 22 km every day was difficult. He had accepted the assignment believing that the tribunal's work would be completed in two to three months. However, the large number of pending cases indicated that the process would take considerably longer, prompting him to resign.

Former Justice Ranjit Kumar Bagh had also stepped down, citing personal reasons, without specifying them.

Earlier, former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam resigned from the tribunal, referring to family issues.

The tribunal was constituted on the Supreme Court's directions and comprises 19 retired judges and magistrates. It was set up to provide a mechanism for people whose names were omitted from the final electoral roll after the SIR exercise to seek inclusion. With Basu's resignation, four of the 19 members have now left the panel.

The final electoral roll in West Bengal, excluding around 60 lakh cases referred for judicial adjudication, was published on February 28. The Election Commission had said supplementary lists would be published as the adjudication process progressed.

West Bengal had 7,66,37,529 registered voters before the SIR notification was issued in November last year. The draft electoral roll, published in December, removed 58,20,899 names. The final roll published on February 28 this year recorded a total of 63,66,952 deletions.

The tribunal's workload is linked to the cases arising from these deletions. The supplementary rolls are expected to reflect the outcome of the judicial scrutiny, allowing eligible applicants whose claims are accepted to have their names added to the electoral list.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

IANS

[email protected]