The Madras High Court on Monday reserved its verdict on a petition filed by DMK leader and former Co-operatives Minister KR Periakaruppan, who alleged that a postal ballot was wrongly processed between two Assembly constituencies sharing the same name, allegedly affecting the final result by a margin of one vote in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
The petitioner, who contested the Assembly elections from Sivagangai district, alleged that one postal vote of No. 185 Tiruppattur constituency in Sivagangai in his favour had been wrongly sent to No. 50 Tiruppattur constituency of Tiruppattur district, leading to the improper exclusion of a decisive vote. TVK candidate Seenivasa Sethupathi was declared the winner from Sivagangai by a single vote margin.
Earlier, in a special Sunday sitting, the Division Bench of Justice L Victoria Gowri and Justice N Senthil Kumar had issued notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on the petition, seeking its clarification on the procedural and legal framework governing correction or redirection of wrongly assigned postal ballots.
The High Court examined whether any statutory or administrative procedure existed under the electoral framework to correct such an inter-constituency postal ballot error. The Court queried the Election Commission on the remedial mechanism available when a postal ballot was delivered to the wrong Returning Officer and subsequently rejected.
Senior counsel appearing for the petitioner had argued that the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, did not specifically address this rare factual situation. It was submitted that Rule 54A governed postal ballot scrutiny but did not contemplate misrouting between constituencies, and therefore, the constitutional writ jurisdiction under Article 226 was the only effective remedy to ensure electoral justice.
The petitioner’s side further contended that the issue was not one of recounting votes but of ensuring that a valid vote was counted in the correct constituency. It was argued that the alleged administrative error had a direct bearing on the electoral outcome, given the extremely narrow margin, and could even trigger statutory consequences such as a tie resolution process under election law principles.
Opposing the plea, the counsel for the winning candidate argued that the dispute essentially challenged the election result and, therefore, fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of an election petition under Article 329(b) of the Constitution. It was contended that the Returning Officer (RO) becomes functus officio after the declaration of results, and writ jurisdiction cannot be used to indirectly reopen electoral adjudication or seek recount-like relief.
The defence further submitted that the petitioner’s representations were already considered by the Election Commission, and any grievance relating to the correctness of those decisions must be agitated before the designated election tribunal rather than through constitutional writ proceedings.
The Election Commission, through its counsel, also maintained that post-declaration disputes concerning the validity or effect of votes must ordinarily be raised through an election petition mechanism and that the Court should be cautious in exercising writ jurisdiction in matters touching upon the finality of electoral results.
The matter gained urgency in view of the ongoing post-election developments in the constituency, where the declared winner was yet to complete formal assumption of office.
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