Five months after the cancellation of the RK Nagar bye-polls, the Madras High Court has ordered the Election Commission to hold elections in the constituency before December 31. The directive was issued when the court was hearing a public interest litigation on Monday, TNIE reported.

According to reports, the bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar gave the directive when a PIL from KK Ramesh came up for further hearing. The petition demanded that the bye-poll be conducted at the earliest. 

The petitioner had reportedly sent a representation to the Election Commission on July 3 but had received no response regarding the matter. He pointed out that 'As per the Representation of the People Act, if any legislator dies, the by-election should be conducted within six months, yet the date of polls had not been announced for the RK Nagar constituency'.

“It is expected that the Election Commission of India would announce the election date at the earliest and conduct the election, preferably by December 31, 2017,” the bench said, according to TNIE. 

Meanwhile, the political situation in Tamil Nadu remains tenuous, with the ruling AIADMK fighting within itself.

The unified factions led by Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam are already making efforts to retrieve the two leaves symbol, which would be crucial to fight the local body and bye-poll elections.

The TTV Dhinakaran faction on the other hand, has 18 MLAs who are set to take the state government to court on Monday, over their disqualification.