Police take over Marina beach

While the steady and unprecedented congregation of people on the sands of the world famous beach demanding the scrapping of the ban on the jallikattu gave a tough time for the police, now messages calling students and youth for an encore on the beach sands to protest against the new Chief Minister going viral in social media. So the police are not ready take a chance and have tightened the security on the beach. 

After declaring prohibitory orders at Marina, the police are now deploying hundreds of personnel fearing a large turnout of people to protest the appointment of Edappadi Palanisamy as the Chief Minister. 

“Police have taken adequate precautionary measures to prevent the gathering of students and youth on the sands of Marina following the call for protest trending in social media,” said a senior city police officer. 

“We have deployed enough number of police personnel on the Marina and any sort of protest or gathering is prevented on the beach,” the officer added. Police had been repeatedly reminding the public that any sort of gathering on Marina would be seen as illegal and would be dealt with an iron hand. Intelligence sources had warned the city law and order wing that the public sentiment is against the new government and any time protests may erupt in the state capital. 

“As per the intelligence reports, the general public are not happy with the latest political development and feel cheated by their representatives. So the demand for a mass protest is gathering momentum on social media and we just cannot sit and watch and let it spiral in to something massive like the pro-jallikattu protest,” another officer told DTNext.

More than 100 supporters of O Panneerselvam were arrested on Friday after they tried to take out rallies here to urge AIADMK MLAs to take a “fair decision” during the confidence vote in the Assembly. As part of precautionary measures the rallies have been banned, police said. OPS supporters claimed that the police were acting in an “undemocratic manner.”