New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to interfere with the Madras High Court order asking the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to guard the court premises, replacing the Tamil Nadu Police.

The apex court said nobody including lawyers could be allowed to hold institutions to ransom.

Taking exception to the manner in which lawyers on October 14 tried to paralyse the working of the high court, an apex court bench of Justice T.S. Thakur, Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Prafulla C. Pant said: “The chief justice (of the high court) and judges are entitled to say that police is ineffective. You cannot allow the institution to be held to ransom. We will not allow this to happen.”

Saying that the integrity, dignity and effectiveness of the high court had to be maintained and upheld, the apex court said no one, above all lawyers, could be permitted to hold the court to ransom.

The court said this noting that on October 14 on account of the lawyers’ agitation, the high court was not allowed to function.

Lawyers along with their children and women family members squatted in the court room.

Apparently unhappy, the apex court said the high court ordered CISF security as it feels totally insecure with the state police.

The apex court said this during the hearing of a plea by the Tamil Nadu government which challenged the high court order directing the CISF to replace the state police both at the Chennai and the Madurai bench of the high court.

The bench was not impressed by Tamil Nadu’s plea that the high court decision replacing the state police by the CISF would incur an expenditure of Rs.36 crore which the state government will have to pay to the Centre.

The Tamil Nadu government criticised the Centre for making a somersault on its stand saying that the home ministry had initially on October 27 said there was no need for deploying the CISF in the high court, but a day after that, it sent a demand of Rs.16.6 crore for sending the CISF.

Tamil Nadu said that initially the Centre consented to move the high court for reconsideration of its order on deployment of the CISF.

Appearing for the Tamil Nadu government, counsel L. Nageshwar Rao told the court that making a huge payment to the Centre would be a problem.

Besides affecting the morale of the state police, there would be the language problem as more than 15,000 lawyers come to the high court every day.

Saying that the high court was competent to handle the issue of its security, the apex court, while declining to interfere with the high court order, asked counsel Nageshwar Rao to say all this — expenditure, morale of the state police and language problem — to the high court.