San Francisco, Sep 14 (IANS): Twitter shareholders on Tuesday voted to approve Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover bid.

The vote came as Musk's lead team is in a court battle to get out of the deal.

Twitter confirmed that a preliminary count shows it has enough votes to approve the deal, reports The Verge.

Twitter has sued Musk for allegedly breaching the deal agreement.

The vote lets Twitter continue with a lawsuit intended to make Musk close the acquisition.

The legal battle is expected to start in mid-October.

The approval means that Musk and Twitter will proceed to an October trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

"Twitter will push to close the deal regardless, alleging that Musk's complaints are merely a pretext for backing out," the report mentioned.

The vote case as Twitter whistleblower Peter Zatko testified at a US Senate committee.

The Tesla CEO is also trying to buy more time from the court to kick off the Twitter trial, set for October 17, citing the testimony by Zatko.

Musk's legal team has proposed a new timeline that would push the week-long trial to late November.

The former Twitter security head has alleged that Twitter misled regulators about its security practices and actual number of bot accounts.

Musk has said that the testimony of Twitter whistleblower justifies his termination of the $44 billion deal to buy the micro-blogging platform.