The Madras High Court Registry on Monday wrongly listed a petition filed by actor Vijay before a Division Bench of Justices MM Sundresh and C Saravanan, instead of listing it before Justices M Duraiswamy and R Hemalatha, The Hindu reported.
The latter bench deals with writ appeals filed against orders passed by single judges of the court in tax cases.
Vijay’s petition was to dispense with the production of a certified copy of an order earlier passed by a single judge dismissing his 2012 plea against the collection of entry tax by the State government for a Rolls Royce Ghost car.
As the petition was wrongly listed, justice Sundresh informed the actor’s counsel S Kumaresan and directed the Registry to list it before the Tax Bench. When the counsel requested the bench to order the listing of the petition before the Tax Bench on Tuesday, the judge said that he could not issue such a direction and that it was for the Registry to take a call.
On July 13, the Madras High Court dismissed Vijay’s plea filed in 2012, seeking exemption of entry tax for his imported Rolls Royce Ghost car from England and directed him to pay the entry tax within two weeks.
Justice SM Subramaniam, who heard the case, imposed a cost of Rs 1 lakh on the actor, to be paid to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Covid-19 Public Relief Fund.
In his order, the judge 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 order further stated that the petitioner being a “reputed cine actor” is expected to pay the tax “promptly and punctually.” The court noted that the petitioner/actor has large scale fan groups and those fans see the actor as a real hero. “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 court order stated.
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Following this, the actor filed a petition seeking to dispense with the production of a certified copy of the order.
As per the appellate rules, every appeal filed before a Division Bench must be accompanied by a certified copy of the order passed by the single judge. If such certified copy was not available immediately, the appellants must prefer a dispense with application and obtain the permission of the court to file the appeal based on the web copy.
Thus the actor had urged the court to dispense with the production of the certified copy and instead hear his writ appeal against the single judge’s order.