Security stepped up in Thanjavur palace complex

Thanjavur: Tamil Nadu police inspectors Nagarajan and Ravichandran (security) checked the safety and security aspects at the grand Thanjavur palace complex here on Monday.

The 400-year-old Nayak and Maratta palace, houses the precious Art gallery which contains Chola-era icons, bell tower, arsenal tower, durbar halls, ‘Sangeetha Mahal’, ‘Sarja Maadi’ and the famous Saraswathi Mahal library, said to be the biggest manuscript library in Asia.

“As the palace complex contains precious materials and the library, a treasure trove with lot of manuscripts, we checked the safety and security aspects,” the police officers said.

They asked Sivakumar, curator of the art gallery about number of tourists visiting the place every day. They also checked the surveillance cameras in the gallery.

They checked the books sales counter at the entrance of Saraswathi Mahal library. They advised staff to put up a surveillance camera in that place. They got the details of number of visitors per day and the books sold.

They visited the library and checked the surveillance cameras inside and the control room. They said that a high mass light should be installed in the path leading to durbar hall and lights should be installed in places where necessary in the palace complex without allowing areas plunged into darkness.

They also suggested that surveillance cameras should be installed at as many places as possible to monitor the flow of tourists.

They said that all the suggestions will be submitted as a report to the higher-ups and concerned officials in district administration and other departments will be instructed to implement the suggestions.

The checking follows Tamil Nadu Government’s order to check the security aspects of important places like temples and palace complexes, monuments following serial bomb blasts in Sri Lanka. It may be recalled officials checked the security aspects at Big temple here recently.