Supreme Court Admits Plea By DMK's KR Periakaruppan Against One Vote Victory Of TVK's Seenivasa Sethupathi
Amisha Shrivastava
6 Nov 2026 2:38 PM IST
The Supreme Court on Friday (November 6) admitted for hearing plea by DMK candidate KR Periakaruppan challenging victory of TVK's Seenivasa Sethupathi by one vote in Tirupattur Constituency in the recent Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections.
A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Aparesh Singh allowed Sethupathi to file his reply and directed that all relevant record relating to the election be preserved.
The Court admitted Periakaruppan's appeal against Madras High Court order rejecting his Election Petition against Sethupati's election.
Background
Periakaruppan has alleged that postal votes that should have been sent to No. 158 Tiruppattur assembly constituency were wrongly sent to No. 50 Tiruppattur constituency due to a similar constituency name and were subsequently rejected. He alleged that instead of rejecting the postal votes, they should have been sent to the correct constituency and counted. He submitted that if such postal votes were counted for No. 158 Tiruppattur constituency, the one-vote margin would not have occurred and Periakaruppan would have received a majority. He thus argued that the election procedures were not followed as per law.
Sethupathi thus argued that there was no material fact to show how the rules were violated, in a manner which could materially affect the election and/or its outcome. It was also argued that there was no basis for the allegation for exactly one postal ballot to have been received elsewhere in a similarly named constituency.
Sethupathi also argued that Periakaruppan's objections with respect to irregularity in counting of votes was raised belatedly after the declaration of results. It was argued that no such objection was raised at the time of counting of votes. Thus, it was argued that the objection was made only as a ruse to file the election petition.
