On February 4, Mamata Banerjee stood in the crowded courtroom, in the midst of a sea of black-robed lawyers, and, addressing the Supreme Court bench, said, “May I explain, sir? I come from that region… What was the hurry to do what takes two years, only within three months?”

In her white tanter (handloom) saree and “Hawai choti (slippers)”, a black stole around her neck, Mamata Banerjee, as Chief Minister, was making submissions before Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that had set off a churn in West Bengal over alleged disenfranchisement of voters.

This is someone who, as a 20-something youth Congress activist, once stood on the bonnet of J P Narayan’s car in defiance of the anti-Emergency leader.…