Clearing the decks for the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to take over the security of the Madras High Court’s principal seat in Chennai and the Bench in Madurai from the State police, the Tamil Nadu government on Friday remitted Rs. 16 crore to the Central government towards the costs for the same. The State informed the Madras High Court of its decision on Friday.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain an appeal from the State challenging the Madras High Court’s direction to deploy CISF on its campuses from November 16.
On Friday, the Security Committee meeting of the High Court was convened. The agenda of the meeting, presided by Justice R. Sudhakar, was to discuss steps taken for issuance of car parking stickers and proximity cards and segregating the area of the High Court from other buildings in the premises to facilitate the deployment of CISF personnel.
Senior Commandant of CISF M.R. Bhale attended the meeting, while the Sate police was represented by Chennai City Commissioner T.K. Rajendran and Additional Commissioner Ravikumar.
R.C. Paul Kanagaraj, president, Madras High Court Association, who participated, said, “It has been made clear that the CISF protection is only for the High Court building on the campus. Other buildings will be guarded by the State police as usual. It has been decided to demarcate the High Court from the rest of the area inside the premises by putting up a fence or a similar structure.”
Officers of the CISF and the State police would inspect the court premises on Saturday. According to Kanagaraj, since providing proximity cards before November 16 was not practical, advocates would be allowed to use the identity cards provided by the Bar Council or the advocates associations to enter the premises. But litigants would be allowed entry only if they carried an authorisation letter from their advocates.
“A detailed notification informing the guidelines and procedures will be widely published through media on November 14,” Mr. Kanagaraj said.
Citing the apprehension raised by a section of advocates that the language barrier between the CISF personnel and advocates would create problems, he said, “CISF officials have ensured that they will deploy personnel who can speak English.”
