Amid major dispute over his one-vote victory from the Tiruppattur Assembly constituency in 2026 elections, TVK MLA R Seenivasa Sethupathi has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Madras High Court’s interim order restraining him from taking part in any floor test proceedings in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Tuesday, May 12, mentioned the petition for urgent hearing before Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant. The top court has agreed to list the matter for hearing on Wednesday, May 13, IANS reported.
This comes after a vacation Bench of the Madras High Court passed an interim order restraining Sethupathi from “voting or otherwise taking part in any floor test, including confidence motion, no-confidence motion, trust vote or any voting proceeding in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly where the numerical strength of the House is tested, until further orders”.
The interim order was passed by a Bench of Justices L. Victoria Gowri and N. Senthilkumar, while considering a plea filed by DMK leader KR Periakaruppan, who lost the Tiruppattur Assembly seat in Sivaganga district by a margin of just one vote.
As per the results announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Sethupathi bagged 83,365 votes, while Periakaruppan polled 83,364 votes.
After his defeat, Periakaruppan levelled serious allegations of irregularities in the counting process, claiming that a postal ballot meant for Tiruppattur Assembly constituency No.185 in Sivaganga district was mistakenly taken to the Tiruppattur Assembly constituency No.50 in Tiruppattur district near Vellore. He further alleged that it got rejected there, but was not transmitted back to the correct constituency.
The Madras High Court, in its interim order, observed that the case disclosed a “peculiar constitutional anomaly where a postal ballot admittedly relatable to a live and concluded election in one constituency was allegedly diverted to another constituency bearing a similar nomenclature and came to be rejected there”.