Kolkata: Former Calcutta HC Chief Justice TS Sivagnanam on Thursday resigned from an SIR tribunal in Bengal. He cited personal reasons in his resignation letter to Calcutta HC CJ Sujoy Paul and the Election Commission, reports Debashish Konar. After disposing of 1,777 appeals in 22 days and rejecting none, Justice Sivagnanam said that at its current pace, the tribunal would need four years to dispose of all the Kolkata appeals. Initially, Justice Sivagnanam was appointed to the tribunal for petitioners from North 24 Parganas and Kolkata, but he also heard cases from Malda, Murshidabad and Birbhum as they were referred to him by the Supreme Court. Mohammed Mahtab Shaikh, who won on a Congress ticket from the Farakka assembly seat, was the first person whose name was cleared by the tribunal headed by Justice Sivagananam. Justice Sivagananam, who will fly back to Chennai on Friday, said, “I also heard the appeal of Suprabuddha Sen, grandson of eminent painter Nandlal Bose, and his wife Deepa Sen and restored their voting rights. I made the appeal with an open mind.Later, I verified the appeals from Kolkata South and Kolkata North. I worked daily from 8.30 am to 5 pm to settle as many cases as possible and even on Sundays, I dealt with cases without any staff. “I heard the appeals of the nuns of the Missionaries of Charity and allowed 30 or more of them to vote. Although the nuns’ certificates did not match their pre-order life, I did not reject any appeal,” he said. “There are still a lakh pending appeals. There were some problems with online appeals; judges are used 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 used to e-court proceedings, but not all former judges are tech-savvy… The technical support from the state government for the 19 tribunals was excellent,” he said. The former judge said that there is a need for a special button in the system so that notices can be sent to the applicants.