Madras High Court imposes ₹1 lakh cost on lawyer who sought to recover bypoll expenses from resigned MLAs
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Madras High Court. File | Photo Credit: K. Pichumani
The Madras High Court on Tuesday (September 29, 2026) imposed costs of ₹1 lakh on an advocate for filing a public interest litigation (PIL) petition seeking a direction to six resigned MLAs in Tamil Nadu to bear the byelection expenditure and also to restrain them from contesting any election during the subsistence of the present term of the Legislative Assembly.
The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan dismissed the PIL petition filed by Chennai-based lawyer S. Kasi Ramalingam with costs, after observing that the case appeared to have been filed for publicity. The judges said that just last week, they had dismissed on merits a similar case filed by advocate K. Suthan, also from Chennai.
In that order, the Division Bench had held that it was for Parliament to enact a law against the practice of legislators resigning from their posts only to shift political allegiance and immediately re-contest from the same constituency in the resulting bypolls conducted at State cost. It highlighted that the present legal framework does not impose any restriction on such a practice.
“The right to resign a legislative seat is by itself a facet of the constitutional scheme governing membership of a House, and cannot be burdened with extra-statutory conditions by judicial order, however sound the underlying concern may be... this Court cannot convert an executive or legislative option into a judicial command,” the Bench had written in its September 24, 2026, verdict.
Mr. Suthan too had sought a direction to the Election Commission of India to recover the cost of the bypolls from the resigned legislators and disqualify the resignees from contesting elections for a period of five years. However, the Division Bench held that no such direction could be issued when the ECI was not legally empowered to perform any of those acts.
“The Election Commission has no free-standing power, either under Article 324 of the Constitution or otherwise, to add conditions/bar to the existing list of disqualifications; and if the Commission itself has no such power, this Court cannot, through a writ of mandamus, confer that power upon it,” the judgment had read.
Stating that the present case by Mr. Ramalingam had been filed on identical grounds against the six individuals – C. Vijayabaskar (Viralimalai), M.R. Vijayabhaskar (Karur), Esakki Subaya (Ambasamudram), P. Sathyabama (Dharapuram), K. Maragatham Kumaravel (Madurantakam), and S. Jayakumar (Perundurai) – who had resigned from their MLA posts, the judges dismissed the plea with costs.
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