A fortnight after the Madras High Court came down heavily on actor C. Joseph Vijay for having filed a writ petition in 2012 seeking entry tax exemption for his Rolls Royce Ghost imported from England, another similar writ petition filed by actor Dhanush in 2015, seeking exemption of entry tax for his imported car, got listed before the court on Tuesday.
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Justice S.M. Subramaniam directed the Registry to list Mr. Dhanush’s case along with another writ petition filed by Billroth Hospitals, also seeking entry tax exemption, for passing orders on Thursday. When the case was called, no one represented the actor though the name of advocate S. Govindaraman had been mentioned as the counsel on record.
The judge, however, perused the case bundles, and directed the Court Officer to list both the cases under the caption ‘For Orders’ on Thursday. Mr. Dhanush had approached the court after a Regional Transport Officer had insisted upon a no objection certificate from the Commercial Tax Department before registering the car imported by him.
The commercial tax Department, in turn, insisted upon payment of ₹60.66 lakh towards entry tax as a pre-condition to issuing the NOC. Passing interim orders on his writ petition on October 26, 2015, Justice N. Kirubakaran directed the RTO to register the actor’s car on the condition that he should deposit 50% of the tax amount within two weeks.
Subsequently, the time limit was extended and he paid ₹30.33 lakh on November 18, 2015. When this was brought to the notice of Justice M. Duraiswamy on April 27, 2016, the judge recorded it and directed the RTO to register the vehicle in accordance with law and with the usual terms and conditions. Since then, the writ petition had been pending before the court.
