Overview
- On Wednesday, June 3, 2026 the Madras High Court ruled that M. Appavu was the duly elected MLA for Radhapuram in 2016 and set aside I. S. Inbadurai’s earlier declaration, giving Appavu a revised margin of 109 votes.
- The judgment relied on a court-ordered recount conducted in 2019 of 1,508 postal ballots and votes from 39 EVMs that were counted on Madras High Court premises and re-tallied before the final decision.
- The recount found Appavu had 153 valid postal votes compared with one for Inbadurai while 44 postal ballots were declared invalid, a shift that produced the new margin.
- Justice G. Jayachandran found the Returning Officer had made false assertions about the original count, ordered the Assembly Secretary and state to amend official records and to pay Appavu the MLA entitlements for 2016–2021, and said recovering salaries already paid to Inbadurai was impractical.
- The court criticised the years-long delay in resolving the petition and flagged democratic costs of late election disputes, and Inbadurai has said he will appeal the High Court judgment to the Supreme Court.