Madras High Court dismisses Vijay’s plea against penalty of Rs 1.5 crore imposed by IT Department

Chennai: In a setback to actor-politician Vijay, the Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by him against the Income Tax department imposing a fine of Rs 1.5 crore on him for failing to voluntarily disclose an additional income of Rs 15 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal.

The Income Tax department imposed the fine on Vijay after it claimed to have unearthed the undisclosed income during searches at the actor’s premises in 2015. The amount is related to Vijay’s salary for the 2015 Tamil film Puli, of which nearly Rs 5 crore was allegedly paid in cash and not voluntarily disclosed in his returns.

Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy refused to set aside the fine imposed by the I-T department, contending that Vijay disclosed the additional income only after the search operations and not before that. The judge also concluded that the penalty order had been issued within the period of limitation prescribed under the Income Tax Act.

“Hence, there was no infirmity warranting interference with the order,” the judge added.

During the course of the proceedings, Vijay’s counsel said that the I-T Department should have been initiated the penalty proceedings against him by June 30, 2019, and not on June 30, 2022. However, he did not dispute the I-T department’s power to levy a penalty in appropriate cases.

The Income Tax Department opposed Vijay’s plea, maintaining that there was no procedural or statutory violation and submitted that the timelines had been correctly computed based on the nature of the assessment proceedings and that the penalty was imposed strictly in accordance with law.

The judgement comes at a time when Vijay’s Jana Nayagan release has been delayed due to court cases. After the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) referred the movie to the Revising Committee, the producers knocked at the doors of the Madras High Court seeking the film’s release.

Though a single judge bench directed the CBFC to issue 16+ U/A certificate to Jana Nayagan, the CBFC got the judgement stayed by a division bench, which stayed the order and referred the matter back to the judge.