Stalin moves Madras High Court to declare him elected from Kolathur constituency

DMK president M.K. Stalin has filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court, seeking 100% counting of VVPAT slips of the Kolathur Assembly constituency, and consequently to declare him as the returned candidate after nullifying the election of TVK MLA V.S. Babu.

Though Article 329(b) of the Constitution states that no election to Parliament or a State legislature could be called into question except by way of an election petition, the petitioner said his writ petition would be maintainable since he was only challenging the post-result administrative/technical process of EVM/VVPAT checking and verification.

Mr. Stalin said the Supreme Court had, in its 2024 judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms versus Election Commission of India, permitted either the runner-up or the third place holder in a parliamentary/Assembly election to make a request for checking and verification of the burnt memory/microcontroller in 5% of the EVMs by a team of engineers from the EVM manufacturers.

In the 2026 Assembly polls, the petitioner stood second, securing 74,202 votes, and was declared to have lost to Mr. Babu, who had secured 82,997 votes. Hence, he made an application on May 7 for verifying 14 (5%) of the 286 EVM sets used in the Kolathur constituency.

Though the application was made within three days of the declaration of the election results on May 4, the verification process began only on July 29. “This inordinate delay (of nearly three months) is itself contrary to the spirit of the directions issued by the honourable Supreme Court, and has caused serious and irreversible prejudice to my legal rights,” the petitioner said.

Informing the court that he had appointed senior counsel N.R. Elango as his representative for the verification process, Mr. Stalin said one of the VVPAT units had stopped working during the mock poll and began displaying an error on July 30. He complained that another VVPAT unit also stopped working during the verification process that continued on July 31.

The petitioner said his representative was not furnished with any report either from an engineer of Bharat Electronics Limited or any other competent authority explaining the cause of the failure of the two VVPAT units. On the other hand, the petitioner’s representative was only given the option to choose an EVM from any other polling station for verification.

In one of the EVMs taken up for verification, the address tags on the carrying cases on the ballot unit and control unit were found to be new and unfilled. Further, the seal on those address tags were found affixed on the reverse side, contrary to the practice observed in respect of every other EVM set on which the seal was affixed on the front.

Stating that Mr. Elango had on August 4 requested election officials for verification of EVM sets from six additional polling stations, the petitioner added that on August 5, another “alarming irregularity” came to light when one of the ballot units bearing his name was unable to detect the control unit.

Without addressing the serious lapses, the District Election Officer passed an order on August 5, declaring that the verification process had been concluded successfully, he said.

Another writ petition

Mr. Stalin has also filed another writ petition challenging the constitutional validity of certain provisions of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) formulated by the ECI for checking and verification of the burnt memory/microcontroller in 5% of the EVMs as per the Supreme Court directives. He has urged the court to declare as unconstitutional paragraphs 4(a) and 4(c) of the Administrative SOP and paragraph 4.2(p) of the Technical SOP.