news details |
|
|
| Sword of Damocles hung loose on Jammu Cinema owners | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, Oct 6: The cinema owners in Jammu are facing rough time to resurrect the dying virtue of celluloid grandeur, courtesy many factors, with slapping of heavy taxes by the state government being one of the prime causes.
The recent guillotine hanging on the cinema halls came from a new slabs of taxes imposed upon the selling of the tickets, for which a team of sales tax employees have been enshrined with the job to keep a keen eye on the three out of some of the cinema halls running in the province.
Already burdened with diminishing audience in the halls, the cinema owners are finding great hardships in making two ends meet while paying salaries to its staff besides keeping their hopes afloat for some miraculous escape from the wrath having descendant upon the cinema in Jammu.
"Not a single show could be witnessed having more than 20 to 25 odd people sitting in the hall. And then government coming up with new tax slab has cut down our hopes to nearly fifty percent more without any anticipation for resurrection of the revenue in such circumstances," said Ramesh Mahajan, Chairman Shakuntala Cinema Complex and president Cinema Owners Association, Jammu.
He said that already thinning audience has left Jammu cinema in tight spots and now this extra burden of government tax would leave the remaining audience better glued to cable TV rather than coming to the cinema.
"If a person paying Rs 30 to watch a movie in a non-multiplex hall is overburdened with another Rs 15, he is very much likely to recourse to allied mean of entertainment rather than coming to the hall to watch a movie,' said Ramesh adding that though multiplexes are kept out of this tax ambit, the small time cinema owners are likely to lose their bread even if such system continued.
Giving the details of the present scenario running, he said that distributors providing the films to the halls take a Minimum Guarantee (MG) which is decided on a deed besides other allied clauses irrespective of the concern whether the cinema runs successfully or nosedives.
"We have to pay the MG and seek for a full house out turn for some gross profit out which our hall rent could be earned,' said Mahajan adding that every cinema is running in losses for which the Association was looking towards the government for some help.
Secretary Harbans Wahi, owner of Jewel cinema said, "The new tax slab has broken the backbone of the cinema in Jammu".
In this perspective though there is some rekindling of hope for the multiplexes which, debarred from the tax slabs are trying means and ways to keep the cinema alive, those in the peripheries like Udhampur and Katra mourn over the government's decision from depriving of their livelihoods.
"A cinema hall at Dhar road, Udhampur may not find an infrastructure and proficiency to make a mall-cum-cinema to categorize it into multiplex, government needs to see into its actual perspective to relive the cinema owners of such complicacies," said Karan Mengi and Sumit Kailwoo of Raj Theatre and Citylight in Udhampur while talking on phone.
They said a government committee should personally visit the cinema halls at peak hours and decide for itself about the feasibility of running such projects on the peanuts.
However Ramesh Mahajan said that a constant liaison is being tried with Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather who earlier had given an assurance to look into the matter amicably. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
