Form team to monitor cinema prices: Madras High Court

CHENNAI: In a major relief to cinema goers, the Madras high court has directed the state government to constitute a special team to monitor collection of excess admission fee by cinema theatres. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. M. Sundresh gave the directive while disposing of a PIL from G. Devarajan, which sought a direction to the authorities to take action against cinema theatre owners, who collected excess ticket charges by showing new movies and to stop such cheating.

The court said it was not disputed that the maximum rate provided was Rs 120 and the only exception was IMAX theatres in view of G.O dated January 6, 2015 where the maximum has been provided as Rs 480. The petitioner has been making representations giving material to support the allegation that maximum limit was not being followed. In this behalf an extract from the website has also been given showing tickets of Rs 300 and Rs 250.

 The bench said on the conspectus of the matter, it was of the view that in so far as legal position was concerned, there was no dispute. However, much was left to be done at the ground level, as obviously there were various violations. These violations have to be checked by the commercial taxes department and the licensing authority and not that the petitioner or other affected persons should be called upon to litigate over these small amount of few hundred rupees arising from increased amount of charges beyond permissible limits. If the purpose of fixing maximum fee was to provide a facility to the people to see the film at cheaper rates, this cannot be made illusionary and only applicable on paper without proper implementation.”

We, thus, direct the respondents (authorities) to constitute a special team to monitor these aspects of such violations and inform the public at large through proper publicity, a methodology of giving such complaints telephonically to facilitate information to flow to the team. We would expect the team to take proper action so that there is translation in fact of the intent for which such a policy has been framed”, the Bench added.