Actor Vijay was allowed by the Madras High Court on Thursday to file an appeal against the strongly-worded order passed by Justice SM Subramaniam on his 2012 writ petition seeking exemption of entry tax for a Rolls Royce Ghost car imported from England, The Hindu reported.
The matter was previously wrongly listed before a division bench of Justices MM Sundresh and C Saravanan.
On Thursday, the actor’s counsel S Kumaresan informed the division bench headed by Justices R Hemalatha and M Duraiswamy that he had applied for the certified copy of the order but it was yet to be approved by the High Court Registry. So, the division bench, which deals with writ appeals filed against orders passed by single judges of the court in tax cases, permitted the actor to file a writ appeal with a web copy of the order.
The actor’s counsel also urged the court to hear the appeal on July 26 since there was an urgency. Justice Duraiswamy told him that the appeal would be listed immediately if the papers, except for the certified copy of the order, were in order.
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 had imposed costs of ₹1 lakh on the actor while dismissing the writ petition and ordered that the money should be paid to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund.
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The judge observed that tax evasion is to be construed as an anti-national habit, attitude and mindset and is unconstitutional. 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 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 court order stated.
The next hearing of the actor’s writ appeal is yet to be announced by the court.