An 87-year-old man who has lost his right to vote went to the SIR tribunal in Joka on Monday afternoon to “tell the judge that my name was deleted unfairly”.

Thakurpukur resident Manmatha Nath Bhowmik travelled about 3km by bus and reached the Syama Prasad Mookerjee National Institute of Water and Sanitation (SPM-NIWAS) around 2.45pm.

The temperature was around 35°C, but high humidity made conditions torturous.

Bhowmik, a voter in Behala East, was stopped at the gate by central forces. “You cannot go in. You will get a call or message at the right time,” a jawan told the frail man, who was accompanied by a neighbour.

“I want to tell the judge that my name was deleted unfairly,” Bhowmik said in a shaky voice. He carried a bottle of water in the left pocket of his kurta and sipped from it frequently.

Bhowmik was born in Noakhali in undivided Bengal in 1939 and moved to Calcutta in the 1950s as a teenager. He was later registered as an Indian citizen.

On Monday, he carried his Certificate of Registration issued in 1957. “This is to certify that the person whose particulars are given below has been registered by me as a citizen of India under the provisions of section 5(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act, 1955,” the document states.

A former central government employee, Bhowmik retired from what was then still called the Kolkata Port Trust.

He could not understand the grounds on which his name had been flagged. “At the SIR hearing, I submitted my Aadhaar, PAN, PPO (pension payment order) and my citizenship certificate. But my name was still deleted,” he said.

His son has filed an online appeal with the tribunal.

The Joka centre is supposed to host all 19 tribunals — headed by retired high court judges — tasked with deciding the fate of disenfranchised voters.

More than 27 lakh people have been removed from the revised electoral rolls.

Sources in the Election Commission said a section of judges began work at the SPM-NIWAS on Monday.

Till April 9, when Bengal’s electoral rolls were frozen, the tribunals had decided only four cases.

Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul has constituted a three-member panel to frame guidelines for the tribunals. It includes former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and former judges Pradipta Roy and Pranab Kumar Deb. On Sunday, Chief Justice Paul visited the Joka institute.

The Supreme Court, which heard the SIR case on Monday, said that more than 34 lakh
appeals had been filed so far.

Thousands of deleted voters had expected clarity on how the appellate tribunals would function after the previous Supreme Court hearing on April 6. More than a week and another hearing later, many remain in the dark.

Some, like Bhowmik, turned up at the Joka centre, but all were turned away.

Sanjib Khaskal, 49, came from Haridevpur, also part of the Behala East Assembly constituency.

Khaskal has six siblings, three of whom were called for hearings as they were mapped to the same father. The others were cleared, but his name was deleted.

“I read in newspapers about the tribunal. Having five or more siblings is not unheard of. So why this injustice? I want to ask this question to the judge,” said Khaskal, who delivers food for an online aggregator.

On Monday, he returned home without an answer.