SC is only neutral space left to Opposition, and Mamata proved it |
For 15 minutes on 4 February, a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant heard a submission by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on the Election Commission-mandated Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that must be completed before the dates for the state Assembly elections are announced, weeks from now.
It was certainly an unprecedented — actually exceptional — occasion.
The reasons why it was exceptional are two; first, no chief minister in Independent India has done this; second, because the political Opposition to the ruling BJP — albeit in a coalition in the Lok Sabha because it did not win a majority — has no neutral space currently available to make its points at the national level.
The Lok Sabha speaker, shockingly, advised the Leader of the House, that is India’s duly elected prime minister, to forgo his prerogative to speak on the President’s address, because Om Birla claimed he had “credible information” that the Congress would organise an "untoward incident" directed at the prime minister.
When Banerjee spoke about logical discrepancies, micro observers, exclusions on the basis of misspelt names and more, it was not just the Supreme Court that heard her, so did the rest of the country.
The Court........