Ex-judge quits SIR tribunal, says it will take 4 years to clear appeals

KOLKATA: Calcutta HC’s former chief justice TS Sivagnanam resigned from an SIR tribunal in Bengal on Thursday. He cited personal reasons in his resignation letter to Calcutta HC CJ Sujoy Paul and Election Commission, reports Debashis Konar.

After clearing 1,777 appeals over 22 days and rejecting none, Justice Sivagnanam said at its present pace, the tribunal would need four years to clear all Kolkata appeals. Initially, Justice Sivagnanam was appointed to the tribunal for petitioners from North 24 Parganas and Kolkata, but he also conducted hearings for cases from Malda, Murshidabad and Birbhum as they were referred to him by Supreme Court.



Md Mahatab Sheikh, who won on a Congress ticket from the Farakka assembly seat, was the first to have his name cleared by the tribunal headed by Justice Sivagnanam. Justice Sivagnanam, who will be flying back to Chennai on Friday, said, “I even heard the appeals of Suprabuddha Sen, the grandson of eminent painter Nandalal Bose, and his wife Deepa Sen and restored their voting rights. I approached the appeals with an open mind.

Later, I verified the appeals from Kolkata South and Kolkata North. I operated daily from 8.30am to 5pm to clear as many cases as I could, and even on Sundays, I cleared cases without any staff.” “I heard the appeals of the nuns of Missionaries of Charity and allowed 30 or more of them to vote. Although the certificates of the nuns did not match those from their pre-order lives, I did not reject any appeal,” he added.

“There are still one lakh pending appeals. There were some problems with the online appeals; judges are accustomed to giving long orders, but the portal has word-count restrictions, so I started giving orders in four to five lines to accommodate this. I am accustomed to e-court proceedings, but not all ex-judges are tech-savvy... The technical support from the state govt for the 19 tribunals was excellent,” he said. The ex-judge noted there is a need for a special button in the system so that a notice can be sent to the applicants.