There are times in public life when an image lingers longer than words. Mamata Banerjee walking into the Supreme Court to challenge the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls was one such. She was there to speak, but its effect exceeded the legal points she made. Her actual arguments may have won the day or not. History will have its own verdict. Regardless, the very act in that moment spoke to something essential about our times.
The image is more than the visual that composed it, of course. In itself, the picture was striking enough—a small figure draped in a black shawl, partly to resemble lawyers’ robes, partly in protest. That was classic Mamata, being hyperbolic as usual, just in a non-verbal way. But this is not an abstract point about the proverbial war between pictures and words.
What we are getting at is this. Her act, her appearance before the court, embeds an idea, one that comes to be shared collectively—a chief minister, months before a high-stakes assembly election, choosing not to send lawyers to do their job alone, but to speak for herself before the highest court of the land. Arvind Kejriwal had done something similar, but that was different—that was his own case. Here was one branch of the State walking into the precincts of another for a formal conversation.
It is difficult to recall anything quite like it.
It was not politics in the usual language of street theatre—not a rally or a dharna, or a kerbside speech. It was indeed politics, but also way more than that. Stripped down to its most elemental form: a chief minister was saying, in effect, I do not trust this process, and I am here to say so.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, that same day delivered a counterpart moment, giving this a stronger resonance. Parliament was locked in terminal acrimony and anger. The Prime Minister’s reply to the motion of thanks to the President’s address was suspended. The Lok Sabha Speaker later supplied a reason which has no precedent—he ascribed his decision to a threat of the PM being physically harmed. True or not, it expressed the extent of the breakdown. It was an odd, unsettling contrast: the formal arena of democracy frozen in one place, in another a legislative leader choosing the judiciary as her forum.
At one level, Mamata Banerjee doing this feels entirely in character. She has rarely trusted systems. Whether taking on the Left Front decades ago or positioning herself today against the Centre, she has felt them to be antagonistic and has always preferred confrontation over consensus. Even in power, she seems to remain anti-system somehow, relying more on informal local networks.
But to reduce this moment to personality is to miss something more important. The dispute over the SIR should have been, as it is on paper, an argument over method, a matter of technical procedure. Electoral roll revisions, conducted periodically, are meant to clean up duplications, errors, outdated entries. Democracy depends as much on this dull housekeeping as on fiery speeches. But this time, the exercise had arrived in an atmosphere thick with suspicion.
Mamata’s charge is not simply that the process is flawed in its detail, but that it is unfairly designed and potentially disenfranchising—especially for the vulnerable. She spoke of names being dropped, about exclusion being coded into the process, about last-mile agents exercising authority without accountability. Whether these claims ultimately stand up in court is a separate matter. What matters is that a chief minister is formally questioning the integrity of the process, and that by appearing before the Supreme Court, she transmits that question to the wider court of public opinion.
She is not asking voters to judge yet; she is asking judges to intervene. But in doing so, that implicit judgement is kept in suspended animation. This is where discomfort creeps in. The Supreme Court is not designed to absorb and quell political anxiety. It exists to interpret the law, not to reassure citizens when trust frays. And yet, increasingly, that is exactly the role it is being asked to play. When legislatures falter, when institutions are viewed with suspicion, when political dialogue collapses, the court becomes the last address. But the burden placed on the judiciary is made heavier by the sense transmitted to it that it is itself not immune to being judged in the larger public court. Mamata appearing in person is an act meant to increase the pressure on it, to raise the stakes in such a way for the system that virtually dares it. Comply, or break.
The Election Commission is in that witness box too. For decades, its authority came from implicit public trust. Its decisions were institutional. Today, if that sense is abundantly compromised, Mamata’s theatrical method brings that to trial in the open. When a chief minister takes on the commission in person, the spotlight shifts to individuals. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar may not be named as an adversary in legal terms, but his office is suddenly personalised. But we must grasp the game at that level. As a constitutional office being forced to defend itself in real time, under political glare. It is ironic how an anti-system force has taken it upon itself to police the system.
This is a slippery slope to inhabit, and we must be mindful of the dangers. Political competition has sharpened to such a point that it is breaking the very formal spaces that host it. And the disagreements are transmitted to the institutions themselves, escalating every election into a democratic emergency.
Elections are transient events on the larger scale. This is not about Mamata or Gyanesh Kumar or Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi. Mamata may win her grim battle or not. The BJP may manage to widen its footprint in this or that territory. Newer parties may emerge. Older ones may resuscitate themselves—or not. But if India is to move to deeper forms of democracy, eventually exploring forms of electoral reform, there is a vital precondition to that. Dialogue, the very lifeblood of democracy, even if it is conducted in contestation. Each step on this escalatory ladder makes it more difficult to get back to that genuinely democratic place, one where people and institutions are willing to speak honestly and listen carefully.
Santwana Bhattacharya | INTEREST FREE | Editor
(santwana@newindianexpress.com)