The Madras High Court on Wednesday ordered extension of CISF cover for its main building, housing the court halls, for one more year from November 16 when the security cover would elapse as per orders passed early this year. It, however, left the issue of extending the cover to the entire court campus to the discretion of the Security Committee comprising senior judges of the court.
The first Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar passed the extension order on a suo motu writ petition that had been taken up by the court in November 2015 following largescale agitations by lawyers inside the court building. Though Additional Solicitor General G. Rajagopalan insisted on extending the CISF cover to the entire campus, Advocate General Vijay Narayan said it involved financial implications.
It was former Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul who insisted on getting the court building secured by the CISF though the State government objected to it and went up to the Supreme Court only to lose the case. After the central force took over the security of the court buildings, the first Division Bench led by him had passed a series of orders extending the cover periodically by either a year or six months.
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“The judges must feel secure while administering justice and thus, proper security has to be arranged to prevent such incidents, which not only disrupt the functioning of the court but can result in security breaches when courts, especially a court like the present High Court and its Bench, are concerned with sensitive matters,” Mr. Justice Kaul had said in its first order directing the State to pay for the central security force.