Mamata’s rare SC appearance

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee created a rare moment in India’s constitutional history when she chose to personally argue her case before the Supreme Court against the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.

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While Indian law allows any litigant to appear in person, courts ordinarily expect trained lawyers to handle complex constitutional matters. Banerjee, though a law graduate long removed from active legal practice, clearly believed that the gravity of the issue demanded her own voice. Her argument was less about legal technicalities and more about the democratic consequences of the SIR exercise, Banerjee alleged that the revision, hurriedly sought to be completed in three months instead of the usual two years, carried a sinister political purpose: large-scale deletion of names from the voters list. In effect, she warned, the exercise could disenfranchise lakhs of legitimate voters ahead of the next Assembly election, potentially altering its outcome. Who is better, she seemed to ask, to articulate this fear than the elected CM herself?