Seven Assembly Seats Remain Vacant: Resignations and Court Cases Explained

Tamil Nadu has 234 Assembly constituencies. As of August 2026 it has 227 sitting members. Seven seats are vacant, and for five of them the Election Commission is currently barred from even notifying a by-election. For voters in those constituencies, the practical position is that no one holds the seat, no constituency development fund is being disbursed against it, and no date exists on which that will change. How the seats fell vacant Six of the seven vacancies come from the same source: AIADMK members resigning their Assembly seats in the weeks after the government was formed. Maragatham Kumaravel K. left Madurantakam, Sathyabama P. left Dharapuram, Jayakumar S. left Perundurai, Dr Esakki Subaya left Ambasamudram, C. Vijayabaskar left Viralimalai and M.R. Vijayabhaskar left Karur. Several of them have since been publicly associated with TVK. The seventh vacancy is of an entirely different character. C. Joseph Vijay contested and won two seats in 2026 — Perambur (AC 12) and Tiruchirappalli East (AC 141). Article 101 of the Constitution and the corresponding provisions for state legislatures do not permit a member to hold two seats; one must be vacated within the statutory period. He retained Perambur and resigned Tiruchi East, which is why the Chief Minister's second constituency appears on the vacancy list. Dual candidature is legal in India and reasonably common; what is not permitted is holding both seats. A candidate may contest a maximum of two constituencies, and on winning both must vacate one within the period prescribed by the Representation of the People Act. The vacancy that follows is treated exactly like any other casual vacancy, which means the voters of Tiruchi East are now waiting on the same by-election process as five constituencies whose members resigned for entirely political reasons. What the court has actually stayed On 31 July 2026 the Madras High Court stayed the issue of by-election notifications for five constituencies: Karur, Viralimalai, Perundurai, Ambasamudram and Tiruchirappalli East. The stay was extended and currently runs to 24 August 2026, pending disposal of election petitions before the court. It is worth being precise about what a stay of this kind does and does not do. It does not annul the 2026 results in those constituencies. It does not disqualify anyone. It does not decide whether the resignations were validly tendered or accepted. It restrains the Election Commission from starting the by-election process while the underlying petitions are pending, so that a by-poll is not conducted and then rendered meaningless by a subsequent ruling on the original election. The logic is practical rather than technical. An election petition asks the court to set aside the result of the 2026 election in a constituency. If a by-election were held while such a petition was pending and the court subsequently allowed the petition, the state would face two competing claims to the same seat and an unavoidable second poll. Courts routinely prefer to hold the position rather than unwind it afterwards, which is why a stay on notification is the standard remedy at this stage. The two remaining vacancies — Madurantakam and Dharapuram — are not covered by the stay. In principle the Commission can proceed with those independently, though in practice by-elections in a single state are usually clubbed into one polling day for administrative and cost reasons. The constitutional clock Section 151A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 requires that a casual vacancy in a House be filled within six months of its occurrence. There are two recognised exceptions: where the remainder of the member's term is less than one year, and where the Election Commission, in consultation with the Central Government, certifies that holding the by-election within that period is difficult. Neither exception applies here on its face. The 17th Assembly was constituted in May 2026 and runs to 2031, so the remainder of the term is nearly five years. The resignations date from May and June 2026, which places the six-month outer limit somewhere between November 2026 and January 2027 depending on the seat. A judicial stay is a well-recognised reason for the Commission to be unable to comply, but it does not stop the clock indefinitely — it pauses it while the petitions are heard. There is precedent on both sides of that line. Indian states have gone well past the six-month mark where litigation was pending, and courts have also directed the Commission to proceed once the underlying petitions were disposed of. What is unusual here is the number of seats involved at once: five constituencies frozen together, arising from a single wave of resignations, in the first year of a new Assembly. What the margins suggest about the by-polls The five stayed seats were not marginal in 2026. Viralimalai was won by 62,073 votes, Tiruchi East by 27,416, Dharapuram by 16,727, Ambasamudram by 10,245 and Perundurai by 9,693. Karur is the exception at 1,821 — a genuinely close result and the seat most likely to be genuinely contested whenever polling happens. Those numbers, however, describe elections fought under a different set of conditions. Five of the six AIADMK resignations were followed by association with the governing party. A by-election in which the former member returns under a new symbol is a different contest from the one whose margin is on record, and the incumbency being tested is the state government's, not the individual's. By-elections also draw a different electorate. Turnout in Indian by-polls typically falls below the general election in the same seat, sometimes sharply, because there is no government at stake and no statewide campaign to drive attendance. Lower turnout amplifies organisational strength: the side with better booth machinery converts a larger share of its identified voters, and a 10,000-vote general-election margin can compress or invert on a smaller base. That is what makes Karur, at 1,821 votes, the seat to watch, and what makes the wide margins in Viralimalai and Tiruchi East less predictive than they look. Cost is a further consideration in the timing. Conducting a by-election involves the same machinery as a general poll for that constituency: polling stations, electronic voting machines, security deployment, and the full model code of conduct in force across the district for the duration. Election authorities generally prefer to hold multiple by-elections on a single date, which means the five stayed seats and the two unstayed ones are likely to be polled together whenever the court permits. What this means for the House With 227 sitting members, the majority mark on any division is 114 rather than 118. That has no practical effect on the current government's position — the confidence motion of 13 May 2026 carried 144 to 22 — but it does mean that the Assembly is conducting business, passing resolutions and voting budgets while three per cent of the state's constituencies have no representation at all. For citizens in those five constituencies, the immediate consequences are administrative rather than political. The MLA Constituency Development Scheme allocation for the seat has no member to recommend works against. Grievance channels that normally run through an MLA's office run instead through the district administration. Requests for local sanction that would ordinarily carry a member's endorsement carry none. The MLA Constituency Development Scheme allocation in Tamil Nadu runs to several crore rupees per constituency per year, recommended by the sitting member against local works — road repair, school and hospital equipment, water infrastructure, street lighting. With no member in post, that recommendation cannot be made. The funds are not lost, but the works do not begin, and a constituency that stays vacant through a full financial year effectively forfeits a construction season. The stay is scheduled for review on 24 August 2026. Whether it is extended, vacated or disposed of alongside the underlying petitions will determine whether Tamil Nadu holds by-elections in late 2026 or whether the six-month statutory window is tested in court on its own terms.