The Madras High Court on Tuesday ruled in favour of actor Vijay and stayed the order passed by Justice SM Subramaniam which included highly-critical remarks of the actor and imposed a cost of Rs 1 lakh on him for filing a petition challenging the levy of entry tax on his Rolls Royce car, Live Law reported.
Representing the actor, his counsel Senior Advocate Vijay Narayan told the court that Vijay was only challenging the “unjust and derogatory” remarks made by the single judge and not the entry tax demand.
The division bench headed by justices M Duraiswamy and R Hemalatha thus directed Vijay to pay the balance 80% of the tax amount within a week of the issue of the demand challan by the tax department. The actor had previously paid 20% of the tax amount in 2012.
The division bench also directed the Commercial Tax department to raise the challan within a week in response to the advocate’s request for the same citing that the actor does not want the issue “to be hanging for long.”
On July 13, Justice Subramaniam had imposed a cost of ₹1 lakh on Vijay while dismissing his writ petition seeking tax exemption for his imported Rolls Royce Ghost car and ordered that the money should be paid to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund.
In his order, the judge had also berated the actor in strong words for filing such a plea and stated that filing a writ petition for avoiding payment of tax can “never be appreciated.”
“The petitioner/actor has large scale fan groups and those fans see the actor as real heroes. In the state of Tamil Nadu, cine heroes rose as rulers of the state and therefore, the people are under the impression that they are real heroes. Thus, they are not expected to behave like a reel hero,” the order further stated.
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The counter plea filed by Vijay before the division bench said that such remarks were wholly unjustified and uncalled for. The actor’s counsel noted that the single judge had dismissed other cases involving luxury cars with one-page orders but in Vijay’s case, he had passed adverse remarks which created negative publicity.
The judge had cast aspersions on the actor by labelling him as an anti-national and had cast aspersions on the whole acting community, the advocate further submitted.
The advocate added that when Justice SM Subramaniam’s order was dictated in open court, it was a standard order of dismissal like the ones passed in the other similar cases, but when the judgment copy was uploaded, the petitioner was “shocked” to see the derogatory remarks.