MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court criticised the Director General of Police (DGP) for failing to furnish the details of criminal cases pending against serving police officials and directed the secretary to Home Department to submit the report by October 1.
Justice B Pugalendhi gave the direction on Monday, while hearing a petition filed by a police aspirant M Sowntharapandian, challenging rejection of his candidature for Grade II police constable post last year over pendency of a criminal case against him.
During the hearing on September 18, the judge noted that the petitioner’s candidature was rejected based on Rule 14(b) of the Tamil Nadu Police Subordinate Service Rules, which prevents persons involved in criminal cases from entering the service. To ascertain if such stringent rules are confined to the stage of entry alone or are applicable throughout the period of service, the judge sought the report from the DGP.
On Monday, government counsel sought further time to file the report. Refusing to grant it, the judge said he is unable to understand as to why the details are not available, when the 2025-26 policy note of the Home Department mentioned that the state government received Rs 141 crore under the Modernisation of the Police Force scheme (MPF), and `71.48 crore for the digitisation and integration of records in the police department.
“When such systems are in place, the department should be capable of gathering the particulars of criminal cases involving serving police personnel and the corresponding disciplinary proceedings from the records maintained by it,” the judge observed, adding that an additional advocate general should be present to assist the court at the next hearing.
Bypoll plea: Rs 1L cost imposed on petitioner
Chennai: The Madras High Court has imposed cost of `1 lakh on a man for filing a PIL petition seeking action to recover the expenditure to be incurred for conducting the bypolls from the six AIADMK MLAs, who had resigned their posts soon after being elected and defected to TVK.
Dismissing the PIL, the first bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharamadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan imposed the costs on Kasiramalingam and pulled him up for filing such a petition even after it had dismissed another petition praying to stay the October 6 bypolls citing the defection of MLAs.
Kasiramalingam also sought the court to declare the MLAs’ original resignation letters not genuine, make them reimburse the ECI the expenditure for conducting the bypolls, and restrain them from contesting the polls for the period of subsistence of the present Assembly, if they do not pay the amount.