The Madras High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Income Tax Department and the Union government on a petition alleging irregularities in declared assets and financial disclosures made by Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhyyanidhi 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 Income Tax (Investigation) and the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs to file their responses to the petition by April 20 this year.
The court issued the notices on a writ petition filed by R. Kumaravel, a voter from Chepauk-Triplicane Assembly constituency in Chennai.
Kumaravel’s lawyer, senior advocate Rajavachari, told the court that a comparison of the deputy prime minister’s election affidavits from 2021 and 2026 revealed “serious discrepancies”. He claimed that many previously declared assets “disappeared from the affidavit this year. The petitioner said that the affidavit filed by Udhayanidhi this year also contained “unexplained discrepancies in loans, and discrepancies between written disclosures and corporate filings.”
According to the petition, Udhayanidhi Stalin 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.
Kumaravel, in his petition, also questioned the sharp rise in Udhayanidhi’s income. He said that the Deputy Prime Minister’s total income is 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.
