Retired Calcutta High Court judge Biswajit Basu has resigned from the West Bengal SIR tribunals, citing personal reasons, a well-placed source said on Saturday.
Basu becomes fourth retired judge to resign
He became the fourth of the 19 retired judges appointed as heads of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) panels to step down.
Basu's resignation follows those of former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam and retired judges Ranjit Kumar Bag and Indrajit Chatterjee.
The Election Commission constituted 19 appellate tribunals for West Bengal in March in compliance with a Supreme Court order. The SIR resulted in the deletion of nearly 91 lakh voters from West Bengal's electoral rolls for various reasons, including "logical discrepancies". The tribunals are hearing appeals filed by lakhs of voters whose names were deleted.
Murshidabad appeals likely to face delays
Talking to PTI, a senior EC official said the resignations of retired judges are likely to affect the disposal of appeals in Murshidabad district, where a large number of voters were excluded from the electoral rolls.
The resignation of Basu has added to the growing uncertainty surrounding the SIR tribunals.
"Basu communicated his decision to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court through a letter on Friday," the source said.
The ECI official said that Basu and Chatterjee had been assigned responsibility for handling cases from Murshidabad district.
"With both judges stepping down within a month, the disposal of appeals from Murshidabad voters has effectively come to a standstill, raising questions over the tribunal's ability to clear the backlog," the official said.
Previous resignations and concerns over workload
Chatterjee had earlier resigned, citing the difficulty of travelling a distance of around 22 km every day. He had initially agreed to take up the assignment believing it would be a temporary responsibility lasting two to three months. However, the sheer volume of pending cases eventually prompted him to withdraw.
Bag and Sivagnanam had also quit the tribunals citing personal and family reasons.
"Resolving lakhs of cases in this manner is a little difficult. Since this has been done on the directions of the Supreme Court, it has to be carried out in this manner," Basu had said.
He had also stressed the need to improve the infrastructure available to the tribunals to ensure that cases could be handled more effectively.