Tirupattur TVK MLA’s win by a single vote: Madras High Court reserves orders on plea to reject election petition

The Madras High Court has reserved its orders on a plea by Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), R. Seenivasa Sethupathy, to reject an election petition filed against his victory from the Tirupattur constituency in Sivaganga district by a razor-thin margin of just one vote in the 2026 polls.

Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan deferred his verdict on the plea to reject the election petition filed by former Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Minister K.R. Periakaruppan, who contended that he lost the polls primarily because of the existence of two Legislative Assembly constituencies with the same name ‘Tirupattur’ in Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Sethupathy was declared elected on securing 83,375 votes as against 83,374 votes garnered by Mr. Periakaruppan. However, the DMK candidate claimed that a postal vote belonging to the Tirupattur constituency in Sivaganga district had been inadvertently sent to the Tirupattur constituency in Tirupattur district.

Listing out the reasons for seeking a rejection of the election petition, senior counsel V. Raghavachari, assisted by advocate Pranjal Agarwal, said that the election petitioner had presented a “highly implausible” scenario of a postal vote belonging to one constituency having been sent to another constituency just because of their identical names.

He contended that the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, make the identity of the intended constituency extremely difficult to lose by pressing into service multiple independent identifiers, which could enable the authorities to determine the constituency to which a postal ballot belongs.

‘Constituency number the key identifier’

The counsel pointed out that the Tirupattur constituency in Tirupattur district was identified as constituency number 50, whereas the Tirupattur constituency in Sivaganga district was identified as constituency number 185. He asserted that the constituency number, and not the name, was the key identifier.

He said that every voter who intends to exercise his/her franchise through the postal ballot must make an application, using Form 12, to the Returning Officer concerned and therefore, the constituency gets determined emphatically even before the issuance of a postal ballot to an elector.

Further, the postal ballots contain pre-printed full address of the Returning Officer for the relevant constituency without the need for the voters to fill it up by hand, and the postal covers too clearly mention the constituency name, number, district, and full address of the Returning Officer.

“This means the postal ballot is not an anonymous page, which can ordinarily be treated as belonging to a constituency which happens to receive it by accident, coincidence, or otherwise,” Mr. Raghavachari said and added that it was the election officials who transport the postal covers.

The senior counsel also argued that the election petitioner had not produced any material but for an affidavit filed by Tirupattur district DMK candidate A. Nallathambi’s counting agent S. Rajendran who claimed to have come across one postal vote belonging to constituency number 185 at constituency number 50.

“There’s no basis for the claim that exactly one postal vote was received elsewhere in a similarly named constituency,” the senior counsel said and wondered how Mr. Periakaruppan came to know that the single postal vote was cast in his favour when the postal vote gets safeguarded in a nested cover system.