CAUVERY THEATRE Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) PETITIONERS are all exhibitors of cinematograph shows and are owners of theatres where such cinematograph shows are arranged for public viewing by collecting an entrance fee.

(2.) THE State of Karnataka has enacted the Karnataka Entertainments Tax Act, 1958 (Karnataka Act No. 30 of 1958) (for short, the Act), which enables the State Government to levy and collect a tax known as entertainment tax at a percentage of the admission charges charged by the theatre owners on the viewers who come to the theatres to watch movies. Section 3 of the Act, which is the charging Section, reads as under:

(3.) THE petitioners are complaining that providing for different rates of levy of entertainment tax in respect of films exhibited in the same theatre only based on the language in which the film is produced, amounts to a discriminatory act of discriminating in the matter of levy of tax between a class of films produced in Kannada, Kodava, Konkani, Tulu or Banjara languages on the one hand and films produced in the rest of the languages on the other hand and therefore the petitioners have questioned the Constitutional validity of the provisions of Sections 3 (1) (b), 3-A, 3-c and Section 4 of the Act.