Madras High Court: courts can't create a five-year bar or bye-election deposit for MLAs who resign

A Division Bench of the Madras High Court, led by Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari, dismissed a public interest petition against six Tamil Nadu MLAs who resigned soon after the 2026 Assembly elections, forcing bye-elections under Section 151A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The petitioner, an advocate, asked the Court to direct the Election Commission to require a resigning legislator who wished to contest the resulting bye-election to deposit its cost first, and to disqualify MLAs who resign without compelling reason from contesting for five years. He admitted the mechanism 'is presently not incorporated into Indian electoral law'. The Court held that making law is the Legislature's task; courts may fill an interstitial gap only where an authority already has the power to act, as in Union of India v. Association for Democratic Reforms (2002), which required disclosure of facts under Article 324.

Here the petitioner sought an entirely new disqualification and a financial condition on the right to contest. Qualifications and disqualifications are exhaustively dealt with by the Constitution and the 1951 Act, and the Election Commission has no free-standing power to add to them, so the Court could not confer that power by mandamus. It added that a scheme aimed at six named persons would run counter to Article 14, and that the right to resign cannot be burdened by judicial order.