Madras High Court Rejects M K Stalin Plea on Kolathur Assembly Election Result

The Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed as not maintainable a petition filed by former chief minister and DMK chief M K Stalin seeking to nullify the victory of TVK MLA V S Babu from the Kolathur assembly constituency in Chennai.

The plea had challenged the election outcome on grounds of alleged malfunctioning, mismatch, and discrepancies found in electronic voting machines (EVMs) during post-counting verification.

A first bench comprising Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan ruled that the petition could not be entertained under the law. The bench observed that the plea essentially contested the validity of the election process itself.

Addressing the nature of the filing, the bench stated that no matter how the pleadings are structured, a prayer of this description is, in substance, nothing but a challenge to the correctness of the election and squarely attracts the bar under Article 329(b) of the Constitution.

The judges noted that there was substance in the apprehension raised by the Election Commission of India that entertaining such a petition would open a Pandora's box. The court remarked that allowing writ petitions on these grounds would undermine existing statutory processes.

The court stated that if every such anomaly pleaded in the writ petition were made a basis for unseating a returned candidate and declaring the runner-up elected, the statutory scheme of election petitions would be rendered wholly illusory. The bench added that every defeated candidate placed second or third would then have a ready alternative to the election petition, destroying the finality that Article 329(b) seeks to secure for the constitution of legislative bodies.