Madras High Court begins hearing Tamil Nadu CM Vijay’s plea to reject election petitions

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Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay. File | Photo Credit: S. Siva Saravanan

The Madras High Court on Monday (October 5, 2026) commenced hearing arguments on an application filed by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay to reject an election petition filed by a voter, S. Dinesh, challenging his victory from the Perambur Assembly constituency this year.

Justice V. Lakshminarayanan is seized of three election petitions, including the one filed by another voter, T.N. Lakshmi Narasimhan, and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s losing candidate R.D. Shekar, filed against the Chief Minister’s victory in Perambur by a margin of 53,715 votes.

Apart from these three, one more election petition had been filed by DMK candidate S. Inigo Irudayaraj, challenging Mr. Vijay’s victory from the Tiruchi East Assembly constituency, which he had vacated after contesting and winning from both constituencies.

The judge accepted a request made by senior counsel Srinath Sridevan, representing the Chief Minister, to hear the arguments one after another on the applications filed for rejecting each of the four election petitions, as there were certain differences in each case despite overlapping pleadings.

He began hearing the plea to reject Mr. Dinesh’s election petition – filed through the latter’s counsel V.R. Shanmuganathan – first, and decided to take up the application to reject Mr. Narasimhan’s election petition thereafter, since they got numbered one after another.

Senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan, assisted by Pranjal Agarwal and Dixita Gohil, commenced his arguments to reject the first election petition and contended that there was no basis for the allegation of the Chief Minister not having made full and proper disclosure of his assets and liabilities.

He took the court through the evolution of the legal requirement of candidates disclosing their assets, beginning from the 170th Law Commission report submitted in 1999, which recommended such a measure for the first time and also a catena of judgments that were delivered on the issue thereafter.

However, since Mr. Sankaranarayanan could not conclude his arguments on Monday and sought time to continue his submissions some other day, the judge decided to hear him on Tuesday as well, before granting an opportunity to the election petitioner’s counsel Mr. Shanmuganathan to respond.

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