In what has become a fresh tension for ADMK Coordinator O Panneerselvam amid the ongoing tussle and leadership crisis in the party, the former Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister has now been caught with the legal battle to prove his victory in the 2021 assembly polls from his home turf. Three months after the elections, his victory from the Bodinayakkanur constituency has now been challenged in the Madras High Court.

Panneerselvam had served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu three times and he also had served as the Deputy Chief Minister in the previous Edappadi Palaniswami regime. The ADMK had contested in the 2021 assembly polls by forming an alliance with the BJP and PMK. The party had gone to the election with an intense anti-incumbency wave in the state after Edappadi Palaniswami's regime was accused of corruption and flawed administration. The campaign trail was tough for the ADMK and its alliance with the lack of concrete leadership. 

Panneerselvam, who was taking efforts to take over the control of the party, had contested in the Bodinayakkanur constituency in his home district of Theni. To take and defeat him, the DMK has fielded Panneerselvam's arch-nemesis Thanga Tamilselvan against him. The race was tight and too close to call and eventually, Panneerselvam had won the race by defeating his rival. However, the ADMK party had faced a strong debacle in the polls with the party's vote bank getting collapsed in the central and southern districts of Tamil Nadu. 

The ADMK party has won 66 seats and most of the seats were from the party's stronghold Kongu districts in the western part of the state. While ministers who contested in the Kongu belt including Edappadi Palaniswami had won their seats, some of the ministers had lost the race across the state. Panneerselvam had blamed Palaniswami for the defeat in the elections and the former said that the latter's policy of implementing reservation for Vanniyars and tussle with VK Sasikala had adversely impacted the party's victory in the southern districts. 

After securing 66 seats, the ADMK entered the assembly as the Opposition party of the state. However, the party had also witnessed a race for the Opposition leader between Palaniswami and Panneerselvam. After the episodes of furores, Palaniswami was selected as the Opposition Leader while Panneerselvam was appointed as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. While the party is already been facing tensions over VK Sasikala's political comeback, Panneerselvam will be facing a legal battle in the court to prove his victory in Bodinayakkanur. 

According to reports, Milani, a voter from Bodinayakkanur, had moved her petition to the Madras High Court challenging Panneerselvam's victory. In her petition, Milani had claimed that Panneerselvam had concealed some information in his election nomination and she had sought a directive from the High Court to declare his victory as invalid. The reports say that her petition will be taken up for hearing soon and it must be noted that Milani had earlier moved the petition to challenge the victory of Panneerselvam's son OP Ravindranath Kumar, who won as a Lok Sabha MP from Theni in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.