The Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed a writ petition filed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president MK Stalin to order counting of voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips of the Kolathur assembly constituency, and to consequently declare him the returned candidate after nullifying election of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) MLA VS Babu.
A bench of chief justice SA Dharmadhikari and justice G Arul Murugan said the former Tamil Nadu chief minister’s plea was “not maintainable”.
A detailed order of the court is awaited.
On Monday, the bench had reserved its orders after hearing the arguments advanced by senior counsel Kapil Sibal for Stalin and senior counsels G Rajagopal and Dama Seshadri Naidu for the Election Commission of India (ECI).
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ECI had argued that Stalin’s writ petition was not maintainable given Article 329(b) of the Constitution and Section 80 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which categorically states that an election to a parliamentary or Assembly constituency can be challenged only by way of an election petition. Entertaining a “cleverly and artfully” drafted writ petition to set aside an election would lead to the “opening of a pandora’s box,” ECI had said.
Advocate Sibal had argued that the present case did not stem out of any constitutional or statutory provision but a 2024 Supreme Court judgment, in the case of Association for Democratic Reforms versus Election Commission of India, which permitted either the runner-up or the third-place-holder in a parliamentary or Assembly election to make a request for the checking and verification of the “burnt memory/microcontroller in 5% of the EVMs by a team of engineers from the EVM manufacturers.”
{{/usCountry}}Advocate Sibal had argued that the present case did not stem out of any constitutional or statutory provision but a 2024 Supreme Court judgment, in the case of Association for Democratic Reforms versus Election Commission of India, which permitted either the runner-up or the third-place-holder in a parliamentary or Assembly election to make a request for the checking and verification of the “burnt memory/microcontroller in 5% of the EVMs by a team of engineers from the EVM manufacturers.”
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Sibal said that as per the Supreme Court, any application seeking such verification must be made within seven days of the declaration of the election result, and Stalin, who lost the election by 8,795 votes after securing 74,202 votes against Babu’s 82,997, had duly filed his application within three days of the results being declared on May 4 this year.
However, ECI began verifying 14 of the 286 EVM sets used in the Kolathur constituency only on July 29, 2026, well after the expiry of the 45-day period for filing an election petition. The verification was completed on August 5, 2026.
Stalin had also told the court that he had come across serious anomalies in the functioning of the EVM sets during the verification, including an instance where one of the units failed to recognise his name.
“Whether Your Lordships give me relief or not is another matter, but this must be investigated. What’s the explanation for this?” he asked.
Further, Sibal argued that the petitioner could not have been expected to file an election petition within the prescribed 45-day period when the ECI itself had delayed the verification process. The petitioner, he submitted, could not be left without a remedy on account of a delay over which he had no control.