Madras High Court directs Registry not to number DMK’s ₹1 crore defamation suit against TVK Ministers

The Madras High Court has restrained its Registry from numbering a ₹1 crore defamation suit filed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), represented by its general secretary Duraimurugan, against Minister for Public Works and Sports Development Aadhav Arjuna, Minister for Energy Resources and Law C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam’s (TVK) Information Technology (IT) wing.

A Division Bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and G.K. Muthukumar passed the interim orders pursuant to two individual appeals filed by Mr. Kumar and the TVK IT wing. Mr. Arjuna had not filed any appeal so far against the leave (permission) granted by Justice K. Govindarajan Thilakavadi on October 5, 2026 for the DMK to institute the suit before the Madras High Court.

After the Division Bench heard preliminary arguments advanced by Advocate General Vijay Narayan for the Law Minister and senior counsel Satish Parasaran for the TVK IT wing, senior counsel J. Ravindran for the DMK said, the papers related to the two appeals were yet to be served on him and therefore, he would not take steps to number the suit until the next date of hearing of the appeals.

“Hence, the statement is recorded. Registry is directed not to number the civil suit until the next date of hearing,” the judges ordered and directed the Registry to list the appeals next on Tuesday (October 13, 2026). In the meanwhile, advocates Hari Radhakrishnan and Pranjal Agarwal, the counsel on record for the appellants were directed to serve all the papers to Mr. Ravindran.

In the suit, DMK had intended to seek damages from the two Ministers as well as the TVK’s IT wing for reportedly accusing the plaintiff party of having shielded child sexual abuse case accused R. Veeramani of Gem Granites during the party’s last regime. It had sought the leave of the court to file the suit since TVK’s IT Wing as well as X Corp, Meta Platforms and YouTube LLC were located outside its territorial jurisdiction.

The Advocate General opposed the plea for grant of leave on the ground that the suit had been instituted against the Ministers in their official capacity and hence it should not be permitted to be filed without the plaintiff party having issued prior notices to the Ministers as required under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC). He contended that the suit was not maintainable at all for non compliance of procedure.

Similarly, Mr. Parasaran argued a political party was not a juristic person and a suit for defamation would not be maintainable at the instance of a political party. However, Justice Govindarajan had granted leave to file the suit after observing that questions regarding maintainability of the suit could be raised even after it gets numbered and not necessarily at the stage of grant of leave.

However, in his appeal, the Law Minister contended the single judge had failed to take into consideration that the plaintiff party had neither issued any notice to him before instituting the suit nor filed an application before the court to dispense with the requirement of issuing such a notice required under Section 80 of CPC. He said, such a question on maintainability could not be deferred to be decided after the numbering of the suit.