Biswajit Basu becomes fourth member to resign from Bengal SIR tribunal

• Former Calcutta High Court judge Biswajit Basu resigns from the SIR tribunal, citing personal reasons.

• He is the fourth member to leave the 19-member panel hearing appeals from voters excluded during electoral roll revision.

• Supplementary electoral rolls are expected to reflect decisions on pending claims and judicial scrutiny.

Former Calcutta High Court judge Biswajit Basu resigned on Saturday from the tribunal hearing appeals related to West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, becoming the fourth member to leave the panel.

Basu cited personal reasons in his resignation letter to Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Ravindra Vithalrao Ghuge. His departure follows that of former judge Indrajit Chatterjee, who stepped down days earlier.

Constituted on the Supreme Court’s directions, the tribunal comprised 19 retired judges and magistrates. It provides an appeals mechanism for people seeking restoration of their names after exclusion from the electoral rolls during the revision exercise.

Four of its original members have now resigned.

Chatterjee had cited difficulties associated with his daily 22-km commute. He said he had accepted the assignment expecting the tribunal’s work to conclude within two to three months, but the volume of pending cases suggested a considerably longer process.

Former judge Ranjit Kumar Bagh also stepped down citing personal reasons, without elaborating. Former Calcutta High Court chief justice T S Sivagnanam had earlier resigned because of family circumstances.

The departures come as the tribunal deals with appeals arising from an extensive revision of the state’s voter lists.

Before the SIR notification was issued in November last year, West Bengal had 7,66,37,529 registered voters. The draft rolls published in December recorded the deletion of 58,20,899 names.

The final list published on 28 February this year recorded 63,66,952 deletions. Nearly 60 lakh cases referred for adjudication were kept outside that published list pending scrutiny.

The Election Commission had said supplementary rolls would be issued as the judicial process advanced.

Those supplementary lists are expected to incorporate decisions on pending cases, enabling eligible applicants whose claims are accepted to have their names included in the electoral rolls.

With agency inputs