Madras High Court is expected to pronounce the verdict in the case related to the disqualification of 18 AIADMK MLAs on any date which would decide the fate of the Edappady Palaniswamy-led AIADMK government.

The division bench of the court which include Chief Justice Indira Banrejee and Justice M Sundar on Tuesday completed the process of hearing the 18 disqualified AIADMK MLAs who had approached the court with a plea to quash the order issued by speaker P Dhanapal disqualifying them from the legislative assembly.

The 18 MLAs had submitted a memorandum to the then Governor C Vidhyasagar Rao in August 2017 informing him that they have lost trust in the chief minister and hence was withdrawing support to him.
The then Governor had forwarded the petition to the Speaker who in consultation with the chief whip had issued an order disqualifying the MLAs under the ambit of the Anti-Defection Law. Consequently, the legislature secretary issued an order declaring the 18 constituencies represented by the MLAs vacant.

This resulted in the MLAs approaching the court, which restrained the Election Commission of India from going ahead with the by-poll in the constituencies till further orders. The MLAs disqualified are arguing that they never defected from the party and only informed the governor of thier distrust in the current chief minister.

The final verdict by the Madras High Court in this case is crucial for the Edappady Palaniswamy Government since according to the order issued by the Election Commission of India, the government has only 111 members in the 234 member House.

The government needs 118 MLAs to claim simple majority in the House. If the High Court quashes the order of the Speaker, it is almost certain that the Palaniswamy government would fall.
If the Court upholds the Speaker’s order, it would lead to by-election from 18 the constituencies which would also be a crucial test for them since the sidelined leader TTV Dinakaran is already proved with the win in RK Nagar by-election that he is capable of upturn the supremacy of the current custodians of the party.