Madras HC Reserves Orders on MK Stalin Plea Challenging Kolathur Election Result

The Madras High Court on Monday reserved its orders on a petition filed by DMK chief M K Stalin seeking to nullify the election victory of TVK MLA V S Babu from the Kolathur assembly constituency. The plea was moved on the grounds of alleged malfunctioning, mismatch, and discrepancies found in electronic voting machines (EVMs) during post-counting verification.

The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan, reserved its verdict after hearing arguments presented by senior counsel Kapil Sibal on behalf of Stalin. The petitioner has sought 100 percent counting of the VVPAT paper slips along with the checking and verification of all 286 electronic voting machines deployed across the Kolathur constituency.

According to Stalin, he submitted a formal application for the post-counting checking and verification of the EVMs on May 7. However, the Election Commission of India (ECI) conducted the exercise only from July 29, which his counsel described as an unprompted 45-day delay.

Detailing the findings of that process, Sibal submitted to the court that a total of 14 machines were designated to be checked. He stated that three out of the four machines examined in the first batch were not functioning, prompting another four machines to be selected, out of which one was also found to be non-functional.

Sibal further argued that since the ECI conducted the verification after a 45-day delay, the petitioner could not file an election petition within the standard timeframe. Because of this circumstance, Sibal submitted that the legal bar under Article 329 of the Constitution should not apply to the current petition.

Appearing for the ECI, senior counsels G Rajagopalan and Dama Seshadri Naidu opposed the plea. They submitted that Article 329 (B) of the Constitution imposes an explicit bar on such petitions, arguing that the petitioner should have approached the ECI before the lapse of the 45 days to conduct the post-counting check.