Why Stalin refused to let his Kolathur defeat end at the ballot box

Chennai: MK Stalin’s defeat in Kolathur was more than an electoral upset for the DMK chief: it ended his winning run in the constituency and was followed by a legal challenge centred on EVM and VVPAT verification.

But the Madras High Court has now dismissed that challenge, holding that the writ petition was “not maintainable”.

The defeat that changed Kolathur

Stalin had held Kolathur since 2011 and had won the constituency by increasingly large margins in successive Assembly elections. In 2021, he won by around 70,000 votes.

The 2026 election produced a dramatic reversal. TVK candidate VS Babu defeated Stalin with 82,997 votes, compared with Stalin’s 74,202 votes, winning by a margin of 8,795 votes. Babu’s victory marked a major upset in Stalin’s Kolathur stronghold and came in actor-turned-politician Vijay’s TVK’s debut Assembly election.

For then Tamil Nadu CM Stalin, the result meant losing a constituency that had been his electoral base for three consecutive elections.

Why did Stalin go to court?

Stalin did not simply seek to overturn the result by claiming that he had lost narrowly. His challenge centred on the process of post-election EVM verification.

According to his petition, Stalin applied on May 7, three days after the May 4 election result, for verification of the burnt memory or microcontroller of 14 EVMs. He argued that the request was made within the seven-day period contemplated by the Supreme Court's framework for such verification.

The dispute intensified because the verification did not begin until July 29. Stalin’s counsel argued that this happened after the 45-day period for filing an election petition had expired.

That timing became central to Stalin’s case.

What did Stalin allege?

During the verification process, Stalin’s side pointed to what it described as serious anomalies.

One of the allegations concerned a Control Unit that allegedly failed to detect a Ballot Unit bearing Stalin’s name. His counsel argued that this raised questions about whether similar problems could have occurred elsewhere.

Stalin therefore sought much wider scrutiny, including 100% VVPAT counting and verification of all 286 EVMs used in the constituency. He also sought the nullification of Babu’s victory and a declaration that he be treated as the returned candidate.

The legal problem Stalin faced

The Election Commission challenged the very route through which Stalin had approached the High Court.

The ECI argued that Article 329(b) of the Constitution and Section 80 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, provide that an Assembly election must be challenged through an election petition.

In other words, the central question before the court was not simply “Were there EVM irregularities?”

It was also:

“Could Stalin use a writ petition to challenge the election result in this manner?”

The ECI argued that allowing such a petition could open the door to candidates routinely using writ proceedings to challenge election victories.

What did the Madras High Court say?

The bench of Chief Justice SA Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan dismissed Stalin’s plea on September 3, holding that it was “not maintainable”. A detailed order is awaited.

That distinction is important.

The court’s decision, as currently reported, was about the maintainability of Stalin’s petition. It should not be interpreted as a judicial finding that the alleged EVM anomalies were proven false.

Equally, the allegations cannot be presented as proof that the 2026 Kolathur result was manipulated.

The 45-day deadline dilemma

Stalin’s counsel Kapil Sibal argued that the delay in EVM verification created a peculiar problem.

Stalin had made his request for verification shortly after the election result. But the actual verification happened only from July 29 to August 5.

By then, the statutory 45-day period for filing an election petition had passed.

Sibal’s argument was essentially that Stalin should not lose his legal remedy because the verification process itself had been delayed.

The ECI, however, maintained that the proper mechanism for challenging an election remained an election petition.

Is Stalin in denial over his defeat?

That is the political question the episode raises, but it should not be stated as an established fact.

The available record shows that Stalin challenged the result after raising specific concerns about EVM verification. It does not establish that he was simply refusing to accept the electoral verdict.

There is, however, a striking political contrast: a leader who had held Kolathur since 2011 and won it by about 70,000 votes in 2021 was defeated in 2026, and instead of the result ending the matter, it triggered an EVM-VVPAT dispute that moved into the courts.

That makes the episode significant beyond the courtroom.

What the court setback means

The immediate consequence is that Stalin has failed, through this writ petition, to obtain the sweeping relief he sought — including 100% VVPAT counting and the nullification of VS Babu’s victory.

The court has also not, on the basis of the currently available order information, adjudicated the underlying EVM allegations on their merits.

The detailed order will therefore be important in determining precisely why the court considered the writ route unavailable and how it dealt with Stalin’s argument concerning the delayed verification.

Analysis

• From political shock to legal challenge

The Kolathur episode has three distinct stages.

• First came the political shock: Stalin lost a seat he had represented since 2011.
• Second came the technical challenge: he sought EVM verification and subsequently raised concerns about alleged anomalies during the verification process.
• Third came the legal obstacle: the ECI argued that the election result could not be challenged through a writ petition, and the High Court accepted the maintainability objection.

This means the latest ruling does not answer the political question of why Stalin lost Kolathur. Nor does it establish that EVM malfunction caused the defeat.

Instead, it answers a narrower but crucial legal question: the particular writ petition filed by Stalin could not be maintained in the form in which it was brought.

The episode therefore provides a more nuanced story than either “Stalin refuses to accept defeat” or “Stalin proved EVM manipulation”.

The facts support something in between: Stalin challenged an unprecedented defeat in his stronghold, invoked the post-election EVM verification process, raised alleged irregularities, and then encountered a procedural barrier when he sought judicial intervention.