Exactly a year after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls started in West Bengal, on November 4, 2025, and with the fate of more than 35 lakh voters still pending before them, the 19 judicial tribunals headed by retired judges are hoping the promised changes in their functioning will finally kick in post-Diwali.On Saturday, news came of a third retired judge, Justice Biswajit Basu, resigning as tribunal head, citing personal reasons. Earlier, former chief justice of the Calcutta High Court T S Sivagananam and Justice Indrajit Chatterjee (retired) had submitted their resignations, with Justice Chatterjee agreeing to stay on after he was promised that his grievances would be addressed.Justice Basu, who has sent his resignation to the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice, is also the chairperson of the Commission on Institutional Corruption, appointed to the post in May 2026. Sources close to the retired judge said he was unhappy over the infrastructure provided for the tribunal, with the move to make Aadhaar identification mandatory for logging into the Election Commission of India (ECI) portal coming as the last straw.The Aadhaar condition for uploading orders was one of the main demands raised by a committee representing the 19 tribunal chiefs with the ECI recently. The other demands included a provision to generate notice for a hearing on the ECI portal, and shifting of the tribunals to a central location in Kolkata from Joka, which is situated on the outskirts.While the ECI agreed to all the demands, these are yet to be implemented on the ground. A source said that the new ECI guidelines would also allow “electors to download orders after the tribunal chiefs have uploaded them”.A source said: “The tribunals continue to function from a room about 12X10 sq ft in size, including the ex-judges and their staff, comprising seven-eight members each, working from 10 am to 5 pm daily. There are few breaks, and no separate toilets for the ex-judges. The judges don’t expect the situation to change in a day or two, but they are happy that the ECI has at least agreed to their demands, particularly to shift the location of the tribunals.”Justice Chatterjee (retd) had cited the daily long commute and bad roads for his resignation.Story continues below this adThe Indian Express reported last month that the tribunal work had come to a virtual halt as their chiefs had refused to use Aadhaar to log into the ECI portal, over privacy concerns. The ex-judges wrote to the West Bengal Additional Chief Electoral Officer on September 24, asking for the Aadhaar authentication to be withdrawn, just three days after the feature was added.On October 28, the state Chief Electoral Officer got back saying the tribunal chiefs could set up digital signature certificates via their PAN card and a government ID card.Sources said that while they wait for the changes to be implemented, the tribunals are going about the process of checking the applications, and maintaining physical records of notings, to be uploaded when the new portal log-ins are allowed.The setting up of judicial tribunals as part of the SIR is unique to Bengal, with the Supreme Court ordering the same in March this year. The tribunals took up the cases of 27.18 lakh voters, struck off the rolls just before the Assembly polls in April, out of the 60.06 lakh originally flagged by the ECI’s centralised software for “logical discrepancies”. The flagging of “logical discrepancies” was also a first.Story continues below this adThe ECI has given scant details of the tribunal functioning. On September 18, it told the Supreme Court that 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed, of which 22.21 lakh were filed by the deleted voters and 16.10 lakh appeals were against inclusions. Only 1.26 lakh appeals had been disposed of till September 10, the ECI said.