The judges agreed with senior counsel G. Rajagopalan, representing ECI, that the balance of convenience was in fact in favor of ECI and not in favor of the petitioners.
The Madras High Court on Wednesday refused to quash orders passed recently by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to deregister a number of political parties that have not contested legislative or parliamentary elections in the last six years.
Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G. Arul Murugan said no interim order could be passed in favor of the deregistered political parties as it would mean allowing their writ petitions and allowing them to contest the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
The judges agreed with senior counsel G. Rajagopalan, representing the ECI, that the balance of convenience was in fact in favor of the ECI and not in favor of the petitioners, who had certainly not challenged any of the elections conducted by the commission in the last six years.
The writs were filed by Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam, Manithaneya Makkal Katchi, Manithaneya Jananayaga Katchi and several others challenging their cancellation of registration. The petitioners have challenged the ECI’s authority to cancel their registration in the absence of statutory authority to do so.
Agreeing that a series of cases argued by senior counsel NL Rajah, S. Prabakaran, P. Wilson, R. Srinivas and others raised a “serious question of constitutional significance”, the judges directed the Supreme Court registry to list the main writ petitions for final hearing in the second week of March 2026.
The petitioners challenged the deregistration orders on the main ground that Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 only spoke of registration of political parties with the ECI, but there was no corresponding provision for deregistration of such parties.
Therefore, once registered, the parties could not be struck off by the ECI under Section 21 of the General Provisions Act, 1897, they argued. In support of their argument, they relied on the Supreme Court’s verdict in Indian National Congress versus Institute of Social Welfare (2002).
In this judgment, the Supreme Court held that parties can only be deregistered under extreme circumstances such as obtaining registration by fraud or forgery or if they cease to have faith and devotion to the Constitution or principles of socialism, secularism and so on.
However, the European Citizens’ Initiative argued that the 2002 judgment was handed down before the commission issued detailed instructions in 2014 by exercising its powers under Article 324 of the Constitution, requiring every other political party to stand against every other political party in elections managed by the commission within a block period of six years.
Mr. Rajagopalan said that after 2014, the ECI made it mandatory for every new political party to include in its constitution that it would contest elections within five years of its registration and that it would agree to deregistration if it failed to contest an election within a block period of six years. He said the guidelines were issued after the Income Tax department brought to the notice of the ECI that many registered political parties were accepting public donations and claiming tax benefits without actually contesting any elections and remaining political parties only on paper.
The petitioners also challenged the deregistration orders on the ground that their members had contested parliamentary and parliamentary elections under symbols belonging to other parties and that their direct participation in local elections had not been taken into consideration by the ECI.
The ECI, however, claimed that participation in elections conducted by the commission itself would be taken into account and said that although notices of submissions for the petitioners were issued by the Chief Electoral Officers, the deregistration orders were issued by the ECI Secretary.
Published – 18 Feb 2026 10:00 PM IST