Full bench suggests extending CISF cover to entire HC campus

A full bench of three judges of the Madras High Court has suggested to the Chief Justice Indira Banerjee to consider extending the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) cover to the entire court campus, including small causes courts and city civil courts.

A bench consisting of Justice M. Sathyanarayanan, Justice M M Sundresh and Justice TS Sivagnanam was disposing of a PIL from B Saravana Sathish Kumar recently.

The petitioner sought a direction to 224 Bar Associations across the state to take steps to prevent protests inside court campuses and to allow advocates, who wish to represent their clients during boycotts announced by lawyers' associations, to function.

When the plea came up, the High Court Registrar General filed a report stating that the meetings between the Bar and Bench were conducted periodically.

After the CISF took over security from November 16, 2015, agitations, protests and demonstrations have been eliminated and conducive atmosphere was prevailing in court.

Insofar as the city civil and small causes courts campus were concerned, CCTV cameras are in operation and whenever misdeed or misconduct of advocates is brought to the knowledge of the registrar, it is forwarded to the Bar council, for appropriate action, the registrar general submitted.

The bench recorded the submission.

Directing the high court registry to submit "necessary proposal" to the Chief Justice, the full bench said in the event of expansion of CISF deployment to other courts in the premises, barricades now put up between the high court and small causes and city civil court campus, may also be removed.

The partition put up for security purposes, may create a sense of unease among advocates for the reason that both the campuses, remained as one, it said.