The Madras High Court on Wednesday ordered notice on a plea from D Selvam, former chairman of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry praying for a direction to the State DGP and the Greater Chennai Police Commissioner to provide police protection to him and his family members
The Madras High Court on Wednesday ordered notice on a plea from D Selvam, former chairman of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry praying for a direction to the State DGP and the Greater Chennai Police Commissioner to provide police protection to him and his family members.
Vacation judge A A Nakkiran, before whom the writ petition from Selvam came up on Wednesday, directed the TN Bar Council secretary, the DGP and the CoP to file their counters by next week.
According to Selvam, as the chairman of the TN Bar Council and a member of various panels constituted by the High Court and other statutory bodies, he had taken disciplinary action against a number of lawyers and the office-bearers of various advocates associations in the State and thereby earned their wrath.
Following the pronouncement of a landmark judgment by Justice N Kirubakaran (retired) when he was sitting at the Madurai Bench in 2015, which had made wearing a helmet compulsory for two wheeler-riders, there were a lot of agitations by the lawyers. Being the authority for controlling and regulating the lawyers, he had issued show cause notices to all the erring lawyers and they were suspended from practice.
When the advocates had agitated against the amendments made to Sec. 34(1) of the Advocates Act-1961,
again there were a lot of protests. And the High Court had directed the Bar Council to take appropriate action against the protestors. Accordingly, Selvam initiated actions.
All this aggravated the situation and there had been a lot of threats to his life, his family members and to his residence and property in Kottivakkam.
After considering the situation, the High Court had directed the then Commissioner of Police A K Vishwanathan to provide police protection to Selvam and his family members from 2015.
It was, however, all of a sudden, withdrawn from December, 2020 without assigning any reason. The armed police was also removed from October 2021 by the police authority.
He had set representations to the Police Commissioner to continue to provide protection on January 7, 2021 and reminders. As there was no response, he filed the present petition.
