The bench of Chief Justice SA Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan dismissed the plea on Tuesday (August 18).

The plea was filed by Advocate PV Selvakumar. Selvakumar argued that the plea sought to preserve constitutional governance, enforcement of constitutional accountability and protection of the constitutional architecture governing the electoral mandate and disqualification of election representatives under the 10^th Schedule.

It may be noted that the TVK party had emerged victorious with 108 votes in the 2026 State Legislative Assembly Elections. However, since the party was short of the required majority of 118 to form a government, they sought support from other political parties. After forming the government, a confidence motion was held in the assembly floor on May 13, in which TVK secured 144 votes in its favour.

Soon after the declaration of results, the AIADMK party General Secretary, through the party whip Agri SS Krishnamurthy, had directed the members to vote against the TVK government. However, on the day of the confidence motion on 13th May, 25 MLAs led by MLA SP Velumani and C Vijayabhaskar voted in favour of TVK, against the party whip. Since the MLAs voted against the party mandate, proceedings were initiated against them under Schedule 10 of the Constitution of India on May 14, 2026.

Meanwhile, 4 MLAs - S Jayakumar, Maragatham Kumaravel, P Sathyabama, Dr Esakki Subbaya resigned from the party, which was accepted by the Speaker. During this time, Edappadi Palaniswamy submitted a letter to the Speaker to drop the disqualification proceedings against the remaining 21 MLAs. Following the party's decision to condone the MLAs, the Speaker accepted the letter and dropped the proceedings.

Following the condonation, two more AIADMK MLAs – C Vijayabhaskar and MR Vijayabhaskar resigned from the party. The acceptance of the resignation of the 6 MLAs is already pending consideration by the court.

The present plea challenged the dropping of disqualification proceedings against the remaining 21 MLAs. The petitioner argued that after voting against the party whip, the disqualification proceedings were initiated against the MLAs under Section 2(1) (a) and 2(1)(b) of the 10^th Schedule of the Constitution, and all the concerned MLAs had lost their primary membership of the party by their conduct.

The petitioner thus argued that the party did not have the authority to pardon or withdraw the disqualification proceedings and the Speaker's acceptance of the request, without deciding the party's power to do so, is illegal and liable to be set aside.

The petitioner argued that once the disqualification proceedings are initiated, it involves the constitutional integrity of the House and not merely a private inter-party dispute. He argued that the Speaker could not have dropped the proceedings merely because the party had changed its stance. The petitioner argued that such acceptance was a constitutional farce.

On the other hand, Advocate General Vijay Narayan submitted that the matter concerned the political party and its member and since the General Secretary of the Party had decided to pardon the MLA, they continued to remain members of the party and any third party could not challenge the same.

During the hearing, the court also wondered how the present petition could be maintained. The court noted that MLAs had not resigned from the party and the party had condoned them within the 15-day time period provided as per law. The court thus wondered how a third party could challenge the decision.

Order Copy awaited.

Counsel for Petitioner: Mr Sakthivel

Counsel for Respondents: Mr Vijay Narayanan, Advocate General

Case Title: PV Selvakumar v The Speaker and Others

Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Mad) 395

Case No: WP 32263 of 2026