PARBHAT TALKIES Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ARTICLE 14 of the Constitution of India has Tseen invoked by the petitioners-cinema owners and an association of cinema owners, operating in the State of Punjab, to challenge the insertion of Sub-section (1-A) in Section 3 of the Punjab Entertainment Duty Act, 1955 (for short "the Act") with effect from 1st April, 1986, annexure P. 1 to the petition.

(2.) SECTION 3 of the Act is the charging section where duty on payments for admission to entertainments is chargeable. The word "entertainment" has been denned in Section 2 (d) of the Act to include any exhibition, performance, amusement, game, sport or race to which persons are ordinarily admitted on payment. Section 3 (1) provides that a person admitted to an entertainment shall be liable to pay an entertainment duty at a rate not exceeding 125 per centum of the payment for admission which the Government may specify, by a notification in this behalf and the said duty shall be collected by the proprietor and rendered to the Government in the manner prescribed. Under this provision, the cinema owners have to pay duty charged per capita on the sale of tickets for the cinema shows arranged by them.

(3.) ON the scene has arrived a competitor of a smaller dimension, the television and its brother gadgets the V. C. R. , the video cassette, etc. , which have gone to provide entertainment publicly as also privately. This Court in Deep Snack Bar, Sonepat v. State of Haryana AIR 1984 P and H 377, while examining the question whether exhibition of motion pictures in a restaurant by means of V. C. Rs. and T. V. sets falls within the definition of the word "entertainment" as defined in Section 2 (d) of the Act, held that it was an "entertainment" coverable under the said provision. One of us was a party to that judgment. This Court had strongly leaned on the ratio of Geeta Enterprises v. State of U. P. AIR 1983 SC 1098, to arrive at that view.