Former Chief Minister and DMK leader MK Stalin suffered a setback on Thursday after the Madras High Court dismissed his challenge against the election of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) candidate VS Babu from Kolathur in the 2026 Assembly elections.
The bench of Chief Justice SA Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan dismissed the plea and held that it was not maintainable.
The move comes after Stalin approached the court seeking directions to the ECI to conduct 100% counting of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips for the Constituency and to check and verify all 286 machines deployed in the constituency for the assembly elections.
Stalin argued that though he had filed the application on May 7 to check and verify burnt memory/ microcontroller of 14 EVMs for any tampering or modification, the checking and verification was done only on July 29, after an inordinate delay.
He submitted that out of the 14 EVMs, 2 EVMs stopped working immediately after they were taken up for checking, contending that the failure unequivocally calls for a technical diagnosis.
Meanwhile, Stalin argued that the proper chain of custody was not adhered to with respect to another EVM. According to Stalin, the address tags on the carrying cases of Ballot Units and Control Units were blank and unfilled, seals were affixed on the reverse side, among other issues. However, the District Election Officer declared that the checking and verification process had been carried out successfully and as per prescribed procedures, Stalin submitted.
When the matter was taken up for hearing, the bench had raised a question on why Stalin had not approached the court by way of an election petition. To this, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Stalin, submitted that the ECI conducted the verification of the EVMs only after an expiry of 45 days after the declaration of election results and thus, Stalin could not have filed an Election Petition. He added that merely because the time period had lapsed, the petitioner could not have been left remediless.
Taking the court through the process of registering votes, Sibal submitted that when the ballot was pressed, a signal was sent to the Control Unit, which then sends a signal to the VVPAT. He added that in the present case, the VVPAT was placed in between, and a signal was sent to the software, which could be easily manipulated.
Senior Advocate Dama Sheshadri Naidu, appearing for the Election Commission of India, opposed the plea and argued that the petitioner was seeking a remedy that lies in an election petition, by way of clever drafting. It was argued that if Stalin had doubts regarding the machines, he should have challenged them at the beginning, and now, after sleeping over his rights, he could not come to court to challenge the same.
Naidu submitted that the Supreme Court has already ruled against a 100% recount, and if the Court allowed it now, it would open a Pandora’s box, with every person coming and filing such petitions.
(With LiveLaw inputs)
