Tamil Nadu CM Vijay moves Madras HC to vacate stay on conducting bye-elections in 5 assembly segments

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Friday approached the Madras High Court with a plea to vacate its interim order that restrained the EC from issuing any notification for bye-election in respect of five constituencies, where the returned candidates resigned.

Vijay stated this in his counter-affidavit filed in response to the Public Interest Litigation filed by advocate K Venkatachalapathy.

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The constituencies included Tiruchirappalli (East) Assembly segment, one of the two seats from where Vijay won in the April 2026 elections and resigned later.

The First Bench comprising Chief Justice S A Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan had on July 10 passed the interim order and directed Vijay, besides former AIADMK MLAs M R Vijayabaskar (Karur), C Vijayabaskar (Viralimalai), S.Jayakumar (Perundurai), and Esaki Subbaiya from Ambasamudram to file their comprehensive counter-affidavits traversing all factual and legal assertions. They all had resigned as MLAs.

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In his counter affidavit, Vijay sought to dismiss with exemplary cost, the PIL, which sought to declare that the vacancies arising out of the resignations of various returned candidates in the Assembly pols do not constitute "clear vacancies" or available vacancies for the purpose of holding bye-elections under Section 151-A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (RPA).

Vijay submitted that the petitioner has no locus standi to file the petition, since he was not qualified to file an election petition. He cannot wage a war placing reliance on the election petitions filed by strangers/third party to the petitioner.

Even assuming without admitting that, if at all anyone may have the right to seek a relief postponing the bye election to the vacant constituencies, it will be the election petitioners due to the alleged possibility of two elected/returned candidates to one seat, if the election petitioner was successful in getting further relief. However, no application seems to have been filed by the election petitioner in respect of Tiruchirappalli (East) Assembly Constituency. Hence, the petitioner was waging a "proxy war" and it was liable to be dismissed in-limine, he added.

Vijay submitted that the petitioner was in no way aggrieved, so also any of the electors of the said constituency, since no one has raised an issue in this regard. Hence there was no public interest involved in the petition. Therefore, the petitioner seems to have filed the petition with ulterior motives. The petitioner lacks bonafides, he added.

The petitioner was only seeking to protect the interest of the election petitioners. But, the stoppage of bye election will deprive several lakhs of people in these constituencies from having democratically elected MLAs, to represent their interest, cause and grievance that too for an indefinite period of time.

Hence, prima facie, the petition was against the larger public interest; it was liable to be dismissed in-limine, he contended.