Madras High Court upholds Speaker's move to drop disqualification of 21 AIADMK MLAs

The Madras High Court has dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking directions to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Speaker and the Assembly Secretary to initiate disqualification proceedings against 21 AIADMK MLAs. The First Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan, upheld the Speaker's decision to withdraw the proceedings following the party's condonation of the MLAs' conduct.

The case relates to 25 rebel AIADMK MLAs who voted in favour of the confidence motion moved by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay on May 13, 2026. The AIADMK general secretary, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, had initially sought disqualification of all 25 MLAs under both paragraphs 2(1)(a) and 2(1)(b) of the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution. However, on May 27, 2026, he wrote to the Speaker, requesting that proceedings against 21 of the MLAs be dropped.

The PIL was filed by advocate P.V. Selvakumar from Tiruvallur district, who argued that the Speaker should not have accepted the general secretary's request to drop proceedings. The petitioner contended that since Mr. Palaniswami had sought action under paragraph 2(1)(a), which relates to voluntarily giving up party membership, the party leader was not entitled to condone such conduct.

Paragraph 2(1)(b) deals with voting against a party whip, but it explicitly allows the party to condone such an act within 15 days. The petitioner's counsel, K. Sakthivel, argued that paragraph 2(1)(a) does not provide for condonation, and therefore the Speaker ought to have continued the disqualification proceedings against the 21 MLAs.

Rejecting this argument, the court noted that the general secretary had invoked paragraph 2(1)(a) on the ground that voting in defiance of a whip amounted to voluntarily giving up party membership. The Bench observed that since the party had subsequently condoned the voting by the 21 MLAs, the contention that disqualification under paragraph 2(1)(a) would still survive was baseless.

Justice Arul Murugan, writing for the Bench, stated, “The moment the general secretary of the political party submitted a letter dated May 27, 2026, to the Speaker condoning the act of the 21 members, the question of their disqualification either under Paragraph 2(1)(a) or 2(1)(b) does not arise and the Speaker rightly dropped the disqualification proceedings.”

The court also concurred with Advocate General Vijay Narayan that the petitioner, being a third party, had no locus standi to interfere with the internal affairs of a political party. The Bench dismissed the PIL, thereby validating the Speaker's decision and clarifying the legal position on condonation under the anti-defection law.