Madras High Court rejects DMK candidate’s election petition over Perundurai constituency

The Madras High Court on Tuesday (September 8, 2026) rejected an election petition filed by DMK candidate for the Perundurai Assembly constituency, Thoppu Venkatachalam alias N.D. Venkatachalam (who recently quit the DMK), challenging the victory of S. Jayakumar, who had contested as an AIADMK candidate but joined the ruling TVK after resigning from his MLA post.

Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy allowed an application filed by Mr. Jayakumar, through his counsel A.P. Suryaprakasam, to reject the election petition. The applicant had won the seat by a margin of 9,693 votes. He had secured 70,302 votes against 60,609 votes garnered by the election petitioner, but submitted his resignation to Legislative Assembly Speaker J.C.D. Prabhakar on May 25, 2026, before joining the TVK.

The dismissal of the application/rejection of the election petition gains significance in light of the fact that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had decided not to conduct bypolls to five (including Perundurai) out of the seven vacant constituencies in Tamil Nadu until the disposal of the election petitions pertaining to those constituencies, in view of a dictum laid down by the Supreme Court.

Responding to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by K. Venkatachalapathy of Tirunelveli, through his counsel V.R. Shanmuganathan, the ECI told the High Court last month that “the Commission does not propose to announce or notify bye-elections until the election petitions challenging the election of the returned candidates in the five constituencies are decided.”

Explaining the reasons for such a decision, Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik had said the Supreme Court, in Election Commission of India versus Telangana Rashtra Samithi (2010), had ordered that a bye-election should not be conducted for a constituency if an election petitioner had sought to declare himself/herself as the returned candidate after nullifying the victory of an MLA/MP.

Therefore, the ECI had said it shall not conduct bypolls to the Tiruchi East, Perundurai, Ambasamudram, Viralimalai, and Karur Assembly constituencies, with respect to which election petitions, along with a plea to declare the election petitioners as returned candidates, were pending. It had notified bye-elections only for Madurantakam and Dharapuram constituencies since no election petition had been filed with respect to them.

Division Bench proceedings

In the meantime, the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan on Tuesday extended, till September 28, 2026, an interim order passed by it on July 10, 2026, restraining the ECI from notifying the bypolls to the five constituencies and decided to take up the PIL petition filed by Mr. Venkatachalapathy for final hearing.

Senior counsel S. Muralidhar, representing Mr. Jayakumar, informed the Division Bench of the order passed by Justice Chakravarthy and urged the Bench to vacate the interim order with respect to the Perundurai constituency. The counsel said that, as of date, no election petition was pending before the High Court with respect to Perundurai and hence, there could not be any restraint on conducting the bypoll there.

He also told the Bench that an appeal against the rejection of the election petition could be filed before the Supreme Court within 30 days only by Mr. Venkatachalam and not by the PIL petitioner and hence, there could not be any stay on conducting the bypoll in Perundurai at the instance of the latter. However, the Division Bench decided to wait for a copy of Justice Chakravarthy’s order before taking a call on the matter.