The Madras High Court on Friday, through separate interim orders, restrained the State government from touching the money lying in the frozen bank accounts of the Madras Race Club (MRC) and the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) till Tuesday. The court said no coercive steps should be taken against the two associations from which revenue authorities had demanded land rental arrears of ₹730 crore and ₹1,553 crore respectively.
While Justice M. Duraiswamy passed the order with respect to the MRC, Justice K. Ravichandrabaabu issued the direction in a writ petition filed by the TNCA. Senior counsel Satish Parasaran and P.R. Raman representing the MRC and the TNCA informed the court that revenue authorities had already taken away ₹1.56 crore and ₹1.38 crore respectively from the frozen bank accounts.
An affidavit filed by the MRC secretary S.M. Karthikeyan recalled the history of the lease deed – signed in March 1946 – and said in 2004 and 2007, the High Court had set aside demand notices issued by revenue authorities for payment of unilaterally revised rent with retrospective effect.
In 2011, a Division Bench had disposed of an appeal with a direction to the government authorities to pass orders afresh after hearing the petitioner club.
Objection submitted
Thereafter, the petitioner received a notice on February 27, 2013 stating that the government had accepted the suggestion of the Board of Revenue to collect rent from lessees at the rate of 7% of the market value of the lands in general and at 14% of the market value from wealthy lessees. MRC submitted its detailed objection to the notice.
In the meantime, the Mambalam-Guindy Taluk was trifurcated into Velachery, Guindy and Mambalam Taluks.
The trifurcation led to around 76 acres, out of the total extent of land taken on lease by MRC, falling under Guindy Taluk and the rest in Velachery Taluk. The Tahsildars of both the Taluks initiated separate proceedings, demanding rental arrears, which are under challenge now. After perusing the proceedings, Mr. Justice Duraiswamy asked a government counsel: “How did the two Tahsildars pass identical orders which are verbatim the same? Did they constitute a Division Bench?”
‘Defreeze one account’
He directed the Chennai Collector to defreeze forthwith one of the five bank accounts of the MRC since the club was in need of money to feed around 700 horses and ponies and manage day-to-day activities.
The club was directed to submit a memo on Tuesday, when the Advocate General was expected to argue the case on behalf of the State, with details of the amount withdrawn from the account.
During the hearing of the TNCA case, Mr. Justice Ravichandrabaabu too took a dig at the Mylapore-Triplicane Taluk Tahsildar for demanding and receiving rental arrears of ₹32 lakh in August this year and then issuing another proceedings the very next month demanding a whopping sum of ₹1,553 crore.
“The escalation is abnormal... It does appear to be a bouncer that jumped from ₹32 lakh to ₹1,553 crore. How come this Tahsildar imagined this figure?”
Advocate General Vijay Narayan submitted that no coercive action would be taken against the TNCA until a counter-affidavit was filed in two weeks.
As for the plea to defreeze the bank accounts, he sought time till Tuesday to obtain instructions from the government.
