India, Feb. 16 -- When Mamata Banerjee appeared before the Supreme Court of India to personally plead West Bengal's case over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, it marked an unprecedented moment in post-Independence India.

Chief Ministers have appeared before constitutional courts earlier-always either as litigants represented by counsel or after being summoned by the Court. Never before had a sitting Chief Minister stepped forward as the political executive personally advancing the state's case in this manner. Crucially, the true import of this act lay not merely in its novelty, but in what it signalled about the dispute that brought her to Court.

Her appearance came against the backdrop of an SIR exercise initiat...