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Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam v. Thiru. C.Ve. Shanmugam

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 976Decided 6 Aug 2025
Civil Appeal No. 10259 of 2025 (arising from SLP(C) No. 21487 of 2025), with Civil Appeal No. 10260 of 2025
Chief Justice · Justice K. Vinod Chandran · Justice N.V. Anjaria

Background

The Tamil Nadu government launched a scheme called "Ungaludan Stalin" ("Your's Stalin") under which volunteers would visit households to help citizens access existing welfare schemes. A sitting opposition Member of Parliament complained to the Election Commission that the scheme glorified the Chief Minister and violated earlier Supreme Court guidelines against using public funds for political self-promotion, then rushed to the Madras High Court within days without waiting for the Election Commission to respond. The High Court's Division Bench passed an ad interim order restraining the government from using any living leader's name, photograph of former Chief Ministers, or the ruling party's symbols in publicising welfare schemes, without giving the State a chance to respond. Both the DMK party and the State of Tamil Nadu appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Court held that its earlier "Common Cause" line of judgments never barred naming a scheme after a political leader. They only restricted publishing photographs of political figures in government advertisements, an area that has itself since been relaxed to permit photos of the President, Prime Minister, Governors, Chief Ministers and Cabinet Ministers. The Court noted that naming welfare schemes after leaders is a nationwide, cross-party practice (evidenced by 45 examples from other states) and found it suspicious that the petitioner singled out only one party's scheme while ignoring identical practices elsewhere, especially having rushed to court within three days of an ECI complaint without giving the Commission or the State a chance to respond. Concluding the writ petition was "misconceived in law" and "an abuse of the process of law," the Court quashed the High Court's interim order, dismissed the writ petition, and imposed costs of Rs. 10,00,000 on the petitioner (to be used for welfare-scheme implementation), with contempt proceedings threatened if unpaid.

Lesson Learnt

Courts are not a venue for settling inter-party political battles that belong before the electorate, and litigants who approach a court in unusual haste, without pursuing available administrative remedies first, risk having their petition dismissed with costs as an abuse of process.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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