Madras High Court fines lawyer ₹1 lakh over bypoll-expense petition

The Madras High Court has imposed costs of ₹1 lakh on a lawyer who sought to recover byelection expenses from six resigned Tamil Nadu MLAs and prevent them from contesting elections during the current Assembly term. A Division Bench headed by Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari dismissed the public-interest litigation filed by Chennai advocate S. Kasi Ramalingam.

The judges said the petition appeared to have been filed for publicity. The case followed a similar petition dismissed by the court the previous week. That earlier ruling held that Parliament, rather than the judiciary, would have to enact restrictions on legislators who resign to change political allegiance and then contest the resulting bypoll.

The court said the constitutional right to resign a legislative seat could not be burdened with additional conditions through a judicial order. It also held that the Election Commission had no independent power to impose new disqualifications or recover the cost of bypolls from resigned legislators. Ramalingam’s petition concerned C.

Vijayabaskar, M.R. Vijayabhaskar, Esakki Subaya, P. Sathyabama, K.

Maragatham Kumaravel and S. Jayakumar. All six had resigned from their MLA positions.

The Bench said the new petition was based on grounds identical to those rejected in the earlier case. It therefore dismissed the plea with costs, leaving any changes to the rules governing resignations and by-elections to Parliament.