MK Stalin moves Madras High Court over his defeat from Kolathur, seeks full VVPAT count

Former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president M K Stalin has moved the Madras High Court, challenging the post-election verification of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in Kolathur — the constituency where his shocking defeat in the Assembly elections four months ago became one of the defining images of the collapse of the previous government.

Stalin, who lost to Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) candidate V S Babu by 8,795 votes, has urged the court to order a 100% count of VVPAT slips besides checking and verification of all 286 EVM sets deployed in the constituency.

He has also sought to have Babu’s election declared void and, consequentially, himself declared the returned candidate. The petition, however, is constructed around a narrower and technically complex challenge. Stalin argues that the post-result checking and verification process — undertaken under procedures framed by the Election Commission following Supreme Court directions — revealed a series of malfunctions and irregularities but was still certified by election authorities as having been “successfully completed.” After finishing second in Kolathur, Stalin applied on May 7 for verification of 14 EVM sets, representing 5% of the constituency’s 286 polling stations.

The exercise began only on July 29, nearly three months later, a delay that the petition says caused “serious and irreversible prejudice” to his legal rights. What followed forms the core of his case. At polling station 28, according to the affidavit, a VVPAT stopped functioning during a fresh mock poll after 12 votes and displayed Error 2.7.

Another VVPAT at polling station 75 also failed during the verification exercise. At polling station 157, the carrying cases of the ballot and control units allegedly had blank address tags, with seals placed differently from those on other machines.

At polling station 79, serial numbers on ballot units did not tally with the address tags, it was alleged. The affidavit describes another episode as particularly serious. On August 5, during verification of polling station 208, a ballot unit carrying Stalin’s name was, according to the petition, not detected by the Control Unit.

His representative immediately recorded an objection. Yet the same day, the District Election Officer certified that the checking and verification had been successfully completed in accordance with prescribed procedures.

Stalin’s case is not simply that machines malfunctioned. He argues that authorities failed to provide specific technical reports explaining why they malfunctioned, instead offering replacement machines in some instances.

His representative had also sought 18 technical clarifications about the verification procedure, which the affidavit says went unanswered. The petition argues that replacing a machine under examination cannot answer a question about the integrity of that particular machine.

The affidavit also makes a statistical argument. At the five polling stations where defects, failures or chain-of-custody issues were recorded, Stalin received 29.87% of the vote, compared with 40.74% across the other 281 booths.

Babu’s share moved almost exactly in the opposite direction — 55.97% at the five booths against 45.08% elsewhere — while the combined vote share of the other 33 candidates remained virtually unchanged. But the petition stops short of asserting that votes were actually transferred or misrecorded.

It says the results are consistent with such a possibility, but also with the possibility that those polling stations simply voted differently – and argues that the incomplete verification leaves no way to distinguish between the two.

Of the 286 polling stations, only 14 were examined; irregularities were recorded in five of those, or 35.71% of the inspected sample. That distinction is politically significant. Stalin had been representing Kolathur since 2011, through successive political cycles, entering the recent election not merely as another candidate but as the incumbent Chief Minister and the central figure of the DMK government.

Arun Janardhanan is an experienced and authoritative Tamil Nadu correspondent for The Indian Express. Based in the state, his reporting combines ground-level access with long-form clarity, offering readers a nuanced understanding of South India’s political, judicial, and cultural life - work that reflects both depth of expertise and sustained authority.

Expertise Geographic Focus: As Tamil Nadu Correspondent focused on politics, crime, faith and disputes, Janardhanan has been also reporting extensively on Sri Lanka, producing a decade-long body of work on its elections, governance, and the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings through detailed stories and interviews.

Key Coverage Areas: State Politics and Governance: Close reporting on the DMK and AIADMK, the emergence of new political actors such as actor Vijay’s TVK, internal party churn, Centre–State tensions, and the role of the Governor.

Legal and Judicial Affairs: Consistent coverage of the Madras High Court, including religion-linked disputes and cases involving state authority and civil liberties. Investigations: Deep-dive series on landmark cases and unresolved questions, including the Tirupati encounter and the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, alongside multiple investigative series from Tamil Nadu.

Culture, Society, and Crisis: Reporting on cultural organisations, language debates, and disaster coverage—from cyclones to prolonged monsoon emergencies—anchored in on-the-ground detail. His reporting has been recognised with the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Beyond journalism, Janardhanan is also a screenwriter; his Malayalam feature film Aarkkariyam was released in 2021. ... Read More