A tribunal system created to decide appeals over deleted names from Bengal’s electoral rolls is facing a backlog so large that one judge in Murshidabad would need about 145 years to clear his caseload at the present pace. The figure is not merely a measure of administrative delay; it shows how the design and capacity of the appeals process can determine whether citizens regain access to the electoral system in time for future elections.
Justice (retd) Indrajit Chatterjee, who presides over one of the appellate tribunals for Murshidabad, has written to the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court expressing his wish to resign. He told The Telegraph that he had disposed of 425 appeals and could hear roughly 10 cases a day. Around 5.3 lakh appeals remain before his tribunal, according to the report.
The arithmetic is stark. At 10 appeals a day, clearing 5 lakh cases would take roughly 50,000 working days. Even if the judge worked every day of the year, the process would extend to around 145 years. The calculation excludes new appeals, adjournments, procedural requirements and the possibility that each matter may require document review, notice and a hearing.
Chatterjee’s own decisions also indicate the consequences of the appeals process. Of the 425 appeals he has decided, 350 appellants—82.35 per cent—had their names restored to the electoral rolls, while 75 were struck off. That outcome does not establish that every deletion was erroneous, but it does show that the tribunal is dealing with cases in which a substantial share of appellants have successfully challenged the initial decision.
The Murshidabad figures sit within a much larger institutional problem. More than 27 lakh voters were deleted after adjudication during the special intensive revision, or SIR, of electoral rolls in Bengal, according to the report. Murshidabad, a Muslim-majority district with 22 Assembly constituencies, recorded the highest number of deletions under the category of “logical discrepancy”. Chatterjee handles appeals from 11 constituencies; another former Calcutta High Court judge handles the remaining 11.
The appeal mechanism was established after a Supreme Court directive. The appellate tribunals began functioning on April 13, with 19 retired high court judges initially appointed. The Election Commission later informed the Supreme Court that more than 38 lakh appeals had been filed before the tribunals. Its affidavit stated that over 37 lakh cases remained pending, while approximately 1.02 lakh had been disposed of. More than 22 lakh appeals were filed by voters excluded from the electoral rolls, the report said.
These numbers reveal a mismatch between the scale of the exercise and the capacity of the institution created to review it. Nineteen tribunals may appear substantial in isolation, but the reported caseload means that each tribunal is carrying tens of thousands of appeals. The Murshidabad tribunal illustrates the operational result: even a judge working consistently and disposing of 10 cases each day cannot bring the pending cases to a timely conclusion.
The problem is also geographical. Chatterjee’s hearing centre is in Joka, 27 kilometres from his home in Salt Lake. He said the journey takes around two hours because of poor road conditions and that the commute limits him to about 10 appeals a day. He has offered to continue if he is allowed to hear appeals from home or from an alternate venue closer to his residence. Otherwise, he said, his resignation would take effect from November 2.
This is where an electoral adjudication issue becomes an infrastructure and governance issue. The tribunal’s formal authority may come from the judicial process, but its daily capacity depends on travel time, hearing venues, digital connectivity, administrative support and the ability of appellants to participate. A case may be legally eligible for review, yet remain practically inaccessible if the judge, citizen or local official must navigate a slow and distant system.
Many hearings are being conducted virtually through the offices of the relevant block development officers, Chatterjee said. That arrangement can reduce travel for appellants and connect tribunals to constituencies spread across a district. But virtual hearings do not automatically resolve the capacity problem. The system still needs judges, case management, records, notices, technical support and time for each matter to be heard and decided. A digital venue can change where a hearing occurs without changing how many cases one tribunal can process.
The source report also indicates that the staffing problem may not be limited to Murshidabad. Another judge handling appeals from a district bordering Calcutta is considering resigning because of the long commute, according to sources cited by The Telegraph. Earlier, former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam stepped down from the tribunal in May, citing personal reasons, while Justice Ranjit Bag resigned in July, also citing personal reasons.
The institutional chain of responsibility is divided. The tribunals were created on the Supreme Court’s order, while a panel headed by the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court takes decisions about their functioning, according to a state election commission official quoted in the report. The official said the state election commission could not interfere. This division may protect the formal independence of the adjudication process, but it also creates a coordination challenge when the system faces a backlog involving millions of voters.
The Election Commission’s role is central because it conducted the electoral-roll revision and submitted the caseload figures to the Supreme Court. The tribunals, meanwhile, are responsible for deciding appeals. The High Court leadership has a role in the functioning of the tribunal arrangement, while block-level offices are being used for many virtual hearings. Each institution controls part of the process, but the citizen experiences the system as one continuous route to a decision.
That route is especially important because an electoral-roll deletion is not simply a clerical correction. The immediate issue is the person’s inclusion or exclusion from the roll. The wider consequence is the time and administrative effort required to establish eligibility again. The 350 successful appeals in Chatterjee’s caseload demonstrate that an appeal can restore a name, but the overall figures suggest that millions are waiting for that opportunity to be completed.
The timing adds another layer of administrative pressure. Municipal elections are due in Howrah and Calcutta in November, according to the report. The source also says that a collective working to restore the voting rights of people removed from the rolls has announced protest rallies in Calcutta, Murshidabad, South Dinajpur and Nadia on November 23. The report attributes criticism of the tribunal capacity to the group’s convener, who called for more tribunals and faster Supreme Court hearings.
The available evidence does not establish how many pending appeals will be resolved before those elections, or whether the tribunal structure will be expanded. It does establish that the current disposal rate is far below the volume of appeals. It also shows that judges’ working conditions, the location of hearing centres and the allocation of constituencies directly affect the speed at which citizens can obtain a decision.
The larger urban question is how administrative systems serving large populations are designed to absorb exceptional demand. Although Murshidabad is not a metropolitan district, the issue connects directly to the functioning of Bengal’s cities: electoral rolls determine participation in municipal governance, and the same institutional capacity that handles rural and district-level appeals supports the legitimacy of urban elections. A tribunal bottleneck can therefore become a governance bottleneck.
What the evidence confirms is a system operating under severe pressure, with a reported 37 lakh appeals still pending and individual tribunals facing workloads that cannot be cleared at their current pace. What remains unresolved is whether the institutions responsible will increase capacity, change hearing arrangements or otherwise reduce the delay. The next milestones are the decisions on tribunal functioning, the possible resignations of judges, continuing court proceedings and the progress of appeals before the November municipal elections.
