Another Judge Quits West Bengal Voter-List Tribunal

Another judge has resigned from a tribunal set up to examine complaints against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list in West Bengal. With this, four judges have now resigned from SIR tribunals.

The latest to resign is Biswajit Basu, a retired judge of the Calcutta High Court. Citing personal reasons, he sent his resignation letter to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court last Friday.

There are 19 such SIR tribunals in West Bengal to settle voters' complaints. The process of revising the voter list ahead of the assembly election has caused widespread political tension in the state.

Opposition parties and civil society allege that at least 3 million valid voters have had their names dropped from the list through this process.

Earlier, former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T. S. Sivagnanam, retired judge Ranjit Kumar Bag and retired judge Indrajit Chatterjee had stepped down from the same process.

According to Election Commission sources, retired judges Biswajit Basu and Indrajit Chatterjee had been given the responsibility of settling appeal cases from Murshidabad district. A large number of voters from this Muslim-majority district have had their names dropped from the list.

Retired judge Indrajit Chatterjee had resigned earlier, citing the strain of travelling about 22 kilometres every day and the pressure of a huge caseload. He had thought it would be a temporary arrangement of two to three months, but he gave up the responsibility as the situation grew complicated. The other two judges had also stepped down citing personal and family reasons.

With two judges resigning in succession, the work of settling appeals from people dropped from the voter list in Murshidabad has come to a complete halt.

Around 9.1 million voters' names had been dropped across West Bengal through the SIR process. Later, on the Supreme Court's direction, the Election Commission formed 19 appeal tribunals in March. Appeals from about 2.2 million dropped voters are currently being heard.

But the successive resignations of judges have thrown into uncertainty the process by which these hundreds of thousands of people might regain their right to vote.

Justice Basu had earlier warned that disposing of lakhs of cases in line with the Supreme Court's direction would be extremely difficult. He had also pointed to the need to improve the infrastructure of the tribunals.

Long and exhausting travel, technical faults in the commission's portal and various other complications are making the backlog of cases in the tribunals worse by the day.