Consider application only after pending dues are paid: Court
the goan I network
PANAJI
The brouhaha over the government permitting Sunburn Klassique electronic dance music (EDM) festival has hit the news again with the Bombay High Court at Goa barring the licencing authority - the State tourism department - from permitting the event unless Rs 2.25 crores is deposited by the organisers.
The payment, towards security deposit and past event dues, will have to paid up first and only then will the tourism department consider the Sunburn Klassique organisers’ application to hold the event this year, the division bench comprising Justices Mahesh Sonak and MS Jawalkar said.
“If, the aforesaid amounts are indeed deposited, then, and only then, the permission granted by the state government shall take effect. The Director of Tourism will ensure that the permission are acted upon only and only if the deposit of Rs 2.25 crore is made and not
otherwise,” Justices Sonak and Jawalkar said in their order.
The order was made in the petition filed by Congress spokesperson Trajano D’Mello who had pleaded that permissions be denied to the
EDM organisers until they pay up dues they owe the government in connection with similar events they organised in the past years.
Of the Rs 2.25 crore that the High Court has asked the EDM organisers to deposit, Rs 1.5 crore is in the form of a security deposit and the balance Rs 75 lakh is towards prima facie outstanding amount of Rs 1.38 crore towards commercial taxes and towards police security services.
Goa has been the favourite venue to host Percept Live’s Sunburn EDM in the month of December and was being organised here for several years. The event, however, ran into trouble with authorities after disputes over payments to the government for licencing and other services such as police security hit a dead end.
The organisers Percept Live then abandoned the idea of holding the event here and moved to other venues including Pune. Last year however, Percept Live franchised the Goa EDM to an entity ‘Sunburn Klassique’ and made a rather low-key comeback in North Goa.
This year, however, it is billed as Goa’s biggest EDM festival, and the tourism sector which is reeling under recessionary trends and declining footfalls is looking forward to the success of the event if only to boost numbers for the many hospitality businesses in the northern coastal belt.
The two-day event is slated to be held at Vagator on December 23-24.
“The aforesaid order has been made because, as observed by us in our earlier orders, every time when this festival is organised, the issue of clearance of earlier dues crops up. Every time we are informed that on this occasion, some different entity is organising the festival. Prima facie, invariably, we feel there is nexus between the previous entity and the entity which proposes to organise this festival,” Friday’s order of Justices Sonak and Jawalkar said.
