The Supreme Court today stayed a recent judgment of the Madras High Court, which declared a candidate as a winner ten years after the election, when the term of the relevant Legislative Assembly was already over.

The High Court's order was passed in the election petition filed by M Appavu (DMK), who challenged the election of his rival AIADMK candidate Inbadurai in the 2016 assembly elections. The High Court decided the election petition only in May 2026, since the matter remained pending due to a Supreme Court's stay which remained in force from 2019. The High Court, while granting notional relief to Appavu and directing the stoppage of MLA pension for Inbadurai, also criticised the Supreme Court for causing the delay.

Today, issuing notice on Inbadurai's petition against the High Court's order, the bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan ordered an interim stay of the operative part of the High Court order.

During the hearing, Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, for Inbadurai, drew the Court's attention to the observations made by the High Court criticizing the Supreme Court. He argued that the High Court order was perverse and said that it was not appropriate for the High Court to comment on the approach taken by the Supreme Court.

To recap, Appavu approached the High Court with an election petition in 2016 challenging the election of Inbadurai. As per the observations of the Returning Officer, Inbadurai had won the election by a margin of 49 votes.

Appavu argued that the valid votes which were cast in his favour were wrongly rejected and therefore a recount was necessary. This was objected to by Inbadurai stating that 203 postal ballots were found to be invalid since they were attested by Headmasters of Middle Schools, who were not gazetted officers, whereas the election rules mandated that postal ballots must be attested by Gazetted Officers.

When the case was taken up in 2019, the court, through an interim order had ordered a recount of all the votes. Following this, the recounting of the postal votes and the EVMs took place on the court campus on October 4, 2019. However, on the same day, the Supreme Court entertained a Special Leave petition against the recount and ordered that the results should not be declared.

This SLP (pending since 2019) was finally disposed of on May 21, 2026 noting lapse of time and term of office having expired. The Supreme Court, however, did not render a finding on whether Headmasters were gazetted officers for the purpose of attesting the postal ballots. Regarding the SC's approach, the High Court observed :

"The Hon'ble Supreme Court, after keeping the matter pending for about six years, thought fit that the question has to be kept open in view of the lapse of time and the term of office having expired and no useful purpose would be served in adjudicating upon the said question in the Civil Appeal. With great respect, the Hon'ble Apex Court should have answered this question since this Court has already as Court of first instance/trial Court given a finding in respect of the above question."

However, on perusing the reports before the Supreme Court, the High Court also noted that out of the 203 postal votes, Appavu had received 153 valid votes and Inbadurai had received 1 valid vote in his favour. Thus, it concluded that Appavu won the election by a margin of 103 votes.

With respect to the validity of attestation by Headmasters, the court noted that it had, in 2019 itself held that headmasters were empowered to attest the identity of the elector. Though the order was challenged by way of an SLP, the Supreme Court had not reversed the finding.

Thus, the court declared Appavu as the winning candidate. At the same time, it did not disqualify Inbadurai but prevented him from claiming any pensionary benefit of being an MLA for the 2016-2021 term.

The court also directed the Secretary, Legislative Assembly to substitute the name of Appavu as the representative of the Radhapuram Assembly Constituency for the 2016-2021 term in all official records. It was further observed that the case reflected a mockery of justice, where people of the constituency were forced to bear a person as their representative though he was not duly elected.

Aggrieved, Inbadurai approached the Supreme Court.

Case Title: I. S. INBADURAI v. M. APPAVU AND ORS., Diary No. 35961-2026