A day after Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa began her campaign for assembly seat, the Karnataka government on Tuesday moved the supreme court against her acquittal of by the high court in the 18-year-old disproportionate assets case.

The government contention is that a serious totalling mistake led to her acquittal and Karnataka’s Advocate-General Ravivarma Kumar had said that it would be a “great travesty of justice” to allow the acquittal of Jayalalithaa to become “final” by not appealing against the verdict in the supreme court.

The value of disproportionate assets was Rs. 2.82 crore and this value was not enough to convict them on charges of corruption, said Justice CR Kumaraswamy in his verdict while disagreeing with the verdict of the Special Court, which had computed the value at Rs. 53.6 crore.

On Monday, Jayalaalitha had appealed to the people of RK Nagar constituency to elect her with a huge margin on the basis of AIADMK government’s achievements during the past four years. She described the by-election as a forerunner to the 2016 Assembly elections.

Recalling that the voters of RK Nagar had elected AIADMK candidate P Vetrivel in 2011 accepting her request, Jayalalithaa said, “this is a by-election you did not want, I know, since there is only one year left for elections to the state assembly. But this has been forced on you because of a case foisted on me due to political conspiracy. And I have come before you as a candidate.”

She said this was not a mere by-election but an opportunity to bid adieu to those whose only job is to hinder the progress of the State. “I have not come here to seek votes by pointing out the shortcomings of others. Instead, I have come here to seek votes on the basis of the welfare schemes and visionary projects implemented by our government. Just because the AIADMK and myself cannot be defeated at the hustings, opposition parties are not contesting this by-election and have been reeling out so many imaginary stories,” she thundered.

Explaining that winning an election and defeating others were two different objectives, Jayalalithaa said, “for me, winning means winning with a massive mandate and that is my ideal.”