The Centre on Tuesday (September 29, 2026) informed the Madras High Court that it has decided to leave it to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to decide on conducting byelections to five vacant constituencies – Tiruchi East, Perundurai, Ambasamudram, Viralimalai, and Karur – in Tamil Nadu.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan, Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan said, he had received a two-page note from the Union Ministry of Law and Justice asking him to leave the case to be argued by the ECI.
Advocate General Vijay Narayan, representing Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Secretary, said, he cannot take sides and therefore, he too had nothing to argue on the public interest litigation petition filed by K. Venkatachalapathy of Tirunelveli for not conducting the bypolls until the disposal of related election petitions.
Senior counsel G. Masilamani, representing Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, who had won from two constituencies but resigned from Tiruchi East and retained Perambur, argued that the ECI must revise its decision to not conduct the bypolls for the five constituencies until the disposal of the election petitions.
He contended, the question of the election petitioners or another candidate getting declared as the returned candidate, if an election petition gets allowed, would arise only if just two candidates had contested in an election and not if there had been a multi cornered contest between many candidates.
The senior counsel said, there was a multi cornered contest in all the 234 Legislative Assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu during the general elections held this year and hence there was no possibility of any constituency having two representatives if a byelection was conducted before disposal of an election petition.
He also questioned the locus standi of the petitioner to file the present case and highlighted that none of the election petitioners had approached the court to stall the byelections. Senior counsel Satish Parasaran and Gopal Sankaranarayanan made their submissions on behalf of resigned MLAs Esakki Subaya and M.R. Vijayabhaskar.
Thereafter, the judges adjourned the matter to Wednesday to hear the arguments of senior counsel Dama Seshadri Naidu, assisted by Niranjan Rajagopalan, for the ECI.
