The Madras High Court on Wednesday sought the response of the State government to a plea to install closed circuit television cameras in all village panchayat offices to prevent ill treatment of elected leaders belonging to the Scheduled Castes.
Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy ordered notice to the government on a public interest litigation petition filed by Chennai based advocate C. Rajaguru who listed several instances of atrocities committed against elected leaders.
He said caste based discrimination was very high in reserved panchayats where the elected representatives were not allowed to sit on chairs, barred from hoisting the national flag, not entrusted with official records, referred to by their caste names, denied the right to run the office independently and so on.
The petitioner said several elected leaders had also been killed.
