Chennai : The Edapaddi Palaniswami government is safe for the present after the Madras High Court on Thursday upheld the disqualification of the 18 AIADMK MLAs that gives adequate numbers to the government in the state assembly.

The Madras High Court on Thursday upheld the disqualification of the 18 AIADMK MLAs in September for submitting a memorandum to the then governor seeking change in Chief Minister.

The MLAs were disqualified by Speaker P Dhanpal in September last year.

The disqualification was challenged by the AIADMK MLAs owing allegiance to rebel leader and AMMK founder TTV Dhinakaran and earlier a two-member bench of the High Court delivered a split verdict in June.

While Chief Justice Indrani Banerjee declined to interfere with the order of the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P. Dhanapal disqualifying 18 MLAs owing allegiance to Dhinakaran in September last year, the other judge Justice M Sundar forming the two-judge bench set aside the Speaker’s order on the ground it is hit by “perversity, non-compliance with the principles of natural justice, mala fides and violation of constitutional mandate”.

Following this the Supreme Court assigned the case to a third judge Sathanarayanan, who pronounced his judgment in the case holding that the disqualification was valid.

Now this gives a huge relief to the Edapaddi Palaniswami government, which is surviving in the assembly by a wafer thin margin.

The government is safe for now, analysts, reading into the judgment said. The 18 disqualified MLAs were kept in a luxury resort in the wake of the judgement. Dhinakaran camp had believed that the verdict was coming in their favour and hence thought it fit to keep their MLAs guarded from any poaching attempts.

Reacting to the judgment, Dhinakaran said that he will challenge the order after studying it in detail. The court judgment is not going to deter us, he said, adding that the perception of the people is different from what the court order says.

“What happened was treachery and a breach of trust of peoples mandate,” Dhinakaran said adding that the peoples court was supreme.

Soon, he will discuss the issue with the disqualified MLAs and chalk out the future course of action.