After the Madras High Court granted interim relief to the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association and Madras Race Club on Friday with respect to “gargantuan” amounts of ₹1,553 crore and ₹730 crore respectively demanded from them by the jurisdictional Tahsildars towards rental arrears for lands leased to them by the government, the Madras Cricket Club (MCC) has also filed a writ petition challenging a demand for ₹225 crore.
In an affidavit filed on behalf of the MCC, its honorary secretary B. Vijay Kumar said the club was established in 1846 and got registered subsequently under the Indian Companies Act of 1913. However, its objectives prohibited payment of dividend to its members and any surplus income was utilised only for the promotion of cricket, tennis, squash, hockey, billiards and snooker, badminton, swimming, yoga and gymnasium activities.
Stating that in 1936 the then Government of Madras leased out more than 13 cawnies of land at Chepauk here to the club for a period of 30 years, Mr. Kumar said the lease deed was modified in 1965 by granting a little over 11 cawnies to Madras Cricket Association (now known as Tamil Nadu Cricket Association) and the rest to MCC for another 30 years. In 1995, the lease for the entire piece of land was extended for 20 more years.
Then, the annual rent was fixed at around ₹50,000, of which the MCC had to pay only ₹6,327. However, in March 2004, to the rude shock of the club, the Mylapore-Triplicane Tahsildar demanded rental arrears of ₹83.46 lakh for the period between April 2000 and December 2003 and ₹1.09 crore for the period between January and March 2004. However, in 2006 the same Tahsildar had sent a reminder for payment of the accepted rent amount of ₹6,327.
“Thus having demanded payment of lease rentals only at the rate of ₹6,327 per annum and having accepted the payments... the respondents (Revenue Secretary, Chennai Collector and Mylapore-Triplicance Tahsildar), all being statutory authorities, would be estopped from claiming lease amounts in excess,” the club said.
Bank account frozen
The club also informed the court that the officials had frozen its bank account too as had been done in the case of MRC and TNCA.
It urged the court to call for all records that had culminated in the latest demand notice and quash them after declaring the action to be illegal and arbitrary. It also wanted an injunction restraining the revenue officials from initiating action either under the Revenue Recovery Act or any other statute for recovering the demand made by them.
