Madras HC Dismisses Election Petition Challenging Gobichettipalayam MLA's Win Over Notary Attestation Defect

Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan rejected the petition at the threshold, finding no material facts pleaded to show how the alleged notary defect affected the election result.

The Madras High Court has dismissed an election petition that sought to void the election of K.A. Sengottaiyan, the returned candidate from the No. 106 Gobichettipalayam Assembly Constituency in Erode District, on the sole ground that the Notary Public who attested his affidavit in Form No. 26 allegedly did not hold a valid certificate of practice on the date of attestation. Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan, sitting singly, allowed the original application filed by Sengottaiyan under Order 7 Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure and dismissed Election Petition No. 31 of 2026 at the threshold, without proceeding to trial. The court held that the election petition was fatally deficient because the petitioner had not pleaded the essential material fact—how the alleged attestation defect materially affected the result of the election.

The Election and the Challenge

Sengottaiyan secured 82,612 votes in the Legislative Assembly Election held in April 2026 from the Gobichettipalayam constituency and was declared the returned candidate. V.B. Prabhu, the election petitioner, filed E.L.P. No. 31 of 2026 under Sections 80, 80A, 81, 82, 83, 84, 98(b)(c) read with Sections 100, 100(1)(d)(iii) and 100(1)(d)(iv) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (RP Act), along with the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 and the Madras High Court (Election Petitions) Rules, 1967. The petition named 18 respondents, including the Returning Officer for the constituency.

The entire challenge rested on a single ground: that one G.P. Dharmaraja, Advocate and Notary Public bearing Registration No. 17843/2019, who attested Sengottaiyan's affidavit in Form No. 26 on non-judicial stamp paper dated 27 March 2026, did not possess a valid and subsisting certificate of practice as a Notary on that date because his certificate had expired and had not been renewed. Prabhu characterised this as a serious illegality and fraud upon the election process. No other ground was raised in the petition.

While the election petition was pending, Sengottaiyan filed Original Application No. 807 of 2026 seeking rejection of the election petition under Order 14 Rule 8 of the Original Side Rules read with Order 7 Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The Returning Officer Had Already Decided the Question

The court's examination of the record disclosed an important prior event. During the scrutiny of nomination papers, Prabhu and another person raised objections before the Returning Officer on 7 April 2026. On the very same day, the Returning Officer conducted a detailed enquiry and rejected both objections by a reasoned order. The Returning Officer specifically concluded that the Advocate who attested the Form No. 26 affidavit possessed a valid and subsisting Notary certificate by virtue of its renewal and was duly authorised to attest the affidavit on the date of attestation. That order was annexed as Document No. 6 to the election petition itself.

Prabhu did not challenge the Returning Officer's order of 7 April 2026 in the manner known to law. Having allowed that order to attain finality, he filed the election petition raising the very same objection before the High Court. The court observed that a second objector had also raised an allegation before the Returning Officer about non-disclosure of certain income particulars in the nomination papers, but that objector had not been impleaded in the election petition and that ground was not raised in the petition at all.

The Legal Argument for Rejection

Counsel for Sengottaiyan, Mr. C. Munusamy and Mr. L.P. Shanmugasundaram, pressed three distinct contentions before the court.

First, they argued that the alleged non-renewal of a Notary certificate does not constitute a “corrupt practice” within the meaning of Section 123 of the RP Act and does not fall within any of the grounds enumerated under Section 100 for declaring an election void. Second, even if the attestation defect were assumed to be real, it would not constitute a substantial defect that materially affected the result of the election within the meaning of Section 100(1)(d)(iv). Third, Section 87 of the RP Act makes the Code of Civil Procedure applicable to the trial of an election petition, and in the absence of any contrary provision in the RP Act, the court could exercise jurisdiction under Order 7 Rule 11 to reject a petition that discloses no legally sustainable cause of action.

Counsel for Prabhu, Mr. I.S. Inbadurai, countered that the grounds raised by Sengottaiyan involved disputed questions of fact that could be adjudicated only after a full-fledged trial with evidence. He relied on the Supreme Court judgment in Dahiben v. Arvindbhai Kalyanji Bhanusali, (2020) 7 SCC 366, for the proposition that when considering rejection of a plaint under Order 7 Rule 11, a court must confine itself to the averments in the plaint and documents annexed thereto, and cannot look at the defence set up by the respondent. He submitted that the renewal certificate relied upon by Sengottaiyan itself demonstrated a disputed factual issue requiring trial, and that a disputed defence cannot short-circuit an election petition at the threshold.

How the Court Reasoned

Justice Ilanthiraiyan accepted that the scope of Order 7 Rule 11 requires the court to examine only the averments in the election petition. He then applied that very principle against Prabhu.

The court drew attention to the statutory scheme governing election petitions. Sections 81, 83(1)(c) and 86 of the RP Act, read with Rule 94-A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 and Form No. 25, form an integral framework for the institution and trial of election petitions. Section 83(1)(a) mandates that an election petition shall contain a concise statement of material facts on which the petitioner relies. The court distinguished between “material facts” and “material particulars”: failure to plead material facts is fatal to an election petition, while deficiencies in material particulars may be cured by amendment. Material facts constitute the entire bundle of facts which, if established, would constitute a complete cause of action.

For a petition invoking Section 100(1)(d)(iv)—which permits an election to be declared void on account of non-compliance with statutory provisions where such non-compliance materially affected the result—the petitioner must specifically aver that the non-compliance materially affected the result of the election as it concerned the returned candidate. The court held that a mere allegation of non-compliance, without that specific averment, does not constitute a complete cause of action.

Looking at the election petition on its face, the court found that Prabhu's entire case was the allegation that the Notary's certificate was not subsisting on 27 March 2026. There was no averment anywhere in the petition explaining how that defect, even if true, materially affected the result of the election in respect of Sengottaiyan. The absence of that foundational pleading was not a curable deficiency in particulars—it went to the root of the cause of action.

The court leaned heavily on the Supreme Court's authoritative statement of the law in Kanimozhi Karunanidhi v. A. Santhana Kumar & Ors., (2024) 18 SCC 592. In that case, the Supreme Court summarised the position across multiple earlier judgments, including the principle that “omission of a single material fact would lead to an incomplete cause of action and the statement of plaint would become bad.” The Supreme Court had also restated that an election petition “cannot be treated lightly or in a fanciful manner nor is it given to a person who uses it as a handle for vexatious purpose.”

Applying those principles, Justice Ilanthiraiyan held that the election petition did not disclose a complete cause of action under Section 100 of the RP Act, even if all the averments in it were taken at face value. The absence of a specific averment on material effect upon the election result was not something the petitioner could supply at trial—it was a foundational omission that rendered the petition incomplete from inception.

The court also examined whether the petition could survive under Section 100(1)(d)(iv) on the theory that the Returning Officer had failed to properly scrutinise the nomination paper. Even on that hypothesis, the petition contained no averment setting out how that alleged failure amounted to non-compliance with any provision of the Constitution, the RP Act, or the rules, or—critically—how such non-compliance materially affected the result of the election. The statutory test under Section 100(1)(d)(iv) remained unsatisfied on the face of the pleadings.

The court accordingly held that Sengottaiyan was entitled to seek rejection of the election petition under Order 7 Rule 11(a) of the Code of Civil Procedure read with Section 83(1)(a) of the RP Act.

Outcome

By order dated 15 September 2026, Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan allowed Original Application No. 807 of 2026 and dismissed Election Petition No. 31 of 2026 in its entirety. No order as to costs was made.