The Madras High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Income Tax (IT) department and the Union government on a petition alleging irregularities in declared assets and financial disclosures made by Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister (CM) Udhayanidhi Stalin in his affidavit for the 2026 state assembly elections.
A bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan directed the Director General of Information Technology (Investigation) and the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs to submit their responses to the petition by April 20 this year.
The court issued notices on a writ petition filed by R. Kumaravel, a voter from Chepauk-Triplicane Assembly constituency in Chennai.
Kumaravel’s lawyer, senior advocate Raghavachari, told the court that a comparison of the deputy chief minister’s election affidavits from 2021 and 2026 revealed “serious discrepancies”. He claimed that many previously declared assets “disappeared from the affidavit this year.”
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The petitioner said Udhayanidhi’s affidavit filed this year also contained “unexplained variance in loans, and inconsistencies between written disclosures and corporate filings.”
According to the petition, Udhayanidhi announced an investment $7.36 crore in film production company Red Giant Movies in 2021. However, his 2026 affidavit does not reflect this investment.
Instead, the most recent affidavit records an investment of $The petition claims Rs 2.63 crore in the same company in his wife’s name.
The petitioner also claimed that Udhayanidhi did not disclose any transfer, sale or restructuring to explain this change.
He also pointed out alleged discrepancies in loan disclosures and said that in 2021, Udhayanidhi reported a loan of $11.06 crore to a Chennai-based private company, Snow Housing. His 2026 affidavit shows the loan amount as $10 Crores.
The petitioner said that the affidavit does not clarify whether the remainder was or not $Rs 1.06 lakh crore has been repaid, written off or adjusted.
Snow Housing has not filed financial statements for three consecutive years after 2021-22, Kumaravel said.
The petition raised similar concerns about disclosures related to other private companies.
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Kumaravel also questioned the sharp rise in Udhayanidhi’s income. He said that the Deputy Prime Minister had a total income of approx $2.02 lakh crore in the five years prior to 2020, which rose to more $10.98 crore in subsequent years. The petitioner said that this increase is not “related to the declared assets.”
He said the inaccurate disclosures violated the Representation of the People Act of 1951 and undermined voters’ right to information. Kumaravel sought the court’s direction to conduct a thorough investigation and urged the court to call for submission of a preliminary report before the state goes to polls on April 23 this year.
