CHENNAI: In a setback to former Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin, the Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed his writ petition to nullify the victory of TVK MLA VS Babu in Kolathur Assembly constituency in the 2026 polls.
The first bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan pronounced the orders.
“The writ petition is dismissed as not maintainable,” the bench said.
The court’s order has dealt a blow to the main Opposition party, which was unseated by the debutant TVK led by actor-politician C Joseph Vijay in the April elections to the Assembly.
Stalin filed the petition seeking the relief of nullifying the victory of TVK MLA and declaring him as the winner on the grounds of malfunctioning, mismatch and discrepancies among the three units of electronic voting machines (EVMs) during the post-counting verification.
He also sought directions to hold 100% counting of the VVPAT and checking and verification of all the 286 electronic voting machines used in the constituency within a timeframe.
During the hearing, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing Stalin, said his client submitted an application for the post-counting checking and verification of the EVMs on May 7. But the Election Commission of India conducted the exercise from July 29 after a 45-day delay.
He said the Supreme Court has mandated the ECI to hold the post-counting checking and verification of 5% of the EVMs used in a constituency.
Fourteen machines were to be checked; three of the four machines were not functioning, so another four were selected, of which one was not functioning, he said.
When the bench asked whether the remedy did not lie in an election petition, Sibal replied that the ECI held the check after a 45-day delay and so Stalin could not file an election petition, and so the bar under Article 329 of the Constitution would not apply in this case.
Citing malfunctioning of EVMs during the checking, he informed the court that in one polling station (No 208), the ballot unit was not detected; thereby the name of Stalin was not detected by the control unit. “This is shocking,” he said.
Sibal emphasised to the court that it should order the ECI to investigate the malfunctioning and discrepancies.
However, senior counsels G Rajagopalan and Dama Seshadri Naidu, representing the ECI, questioned the maintainability and emphatically said the remedy lies in an election petition under Section 80 of the Representation of the People Act and not a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.
They noted that there is a bar on such petitions as per Article 329(b) of the Constitution and said the petitioner should have approached the ECI before the lapse of the 45 days for holding the post-counting checking.
They had also cautioned the court that if the writ petition is allowed, it will open a Pandora’s box.
