Chennai, October 25: The Madras High Court today delivered its verdict on the case of disqualification of 18 AIADMK MLAs. According to the Madras High Court, the disqualification of the AIADMK MLAs stands valid. It comes as a huge setback to the Dinakaran camp. Speaker's decision is upheld by Madras High Court. The verdict comes after four months after a split verdict on the issue by a division bench had maintained the status quo in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. AIADMK 18 MLAs Disqualification: Madras HC Delivers Split Verdict, Case Referred to Larger Bench.

AIADMK workers can be seen celebrating after the verdict.

TTV Dinakaran commenting on the verdict said," There is nothing called setback in politics. This is an experience. We hoped that the verdict will be in our favour. We will discuss with the rest of the MLAs, see, read and then decide the future course of action. This verdict will only bring our party workers, MLAs together."

In September last year, Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P Dhanapal had disqualified these 18 AIADMK MLAs owing allegiance to AMMK leader TTV Dhinakaran on the ground that they had tried to pull down their own party's government in the state. These disqualified MLAs met the then Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao and conveyed that they had lost confidence in Palaniswami following which the Speaker decided to disqualify them.

The disqualified MLAs are Thangatamilselvan, R Murugan, Mariappan Kennedy, K Kathirkamu, C Jayanthi Padmanabhan, P Palaniappan, V Senthil Balaji, S Muthiah, P Vetrivel, NG Parthiban, M Kothandapani, TA Elumalai, M Rengasamy, R Thangadurai, R Balasubramani, SG Subramanian, R Sundarraj and K Uma Maheswari. One of the MLAs STK Jakkaiyan had later switched camps to support Palaniswami.

The current strength of the Tamil Nadu Assembly is 216. While AIADMK has 116 MLAs, including the Speaker, the Opposition has 98 MLAs.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 25, 2018 10:35 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).