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Cinemas to show Kannada films from today

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE July 16. Kannada filmgoers can go back to the cinemas, which will reopen on Thursday as the standoff between producers and exhibitors on sharing service tax of Rs.1.50 per ticket being charged by cinemas will be "finally resolved on Monday,'' the Minister for Information, Ecology and Environment, Allum Veerabhadrappa, said.

Mr. Veerabhadrappa was speaking to presspersons here on Wednesday after a meeting at the Vidhana Soudha, which was attended by representatives of producers and exhibitors. The decision to reopen cinemas comes at a time when most of them screening non-Kannada films started showing films today after six days.

Rally called off

Another decision reached at Wednesday's meeting was that the producers would call off the rally scheduled for Thursday. Parvathamma Rajkumar, producer, who attended the meeting, will participate in the deliberations of a committee that has been formed to resolve the service tax issue.

"The committee has representation from all quarters,'' Mr. Veerabhadrappa said.

While a final decision would be announced on Monday, cinema owners would continue to collect service tax from Thursday through Monday, he said.

"We expect cinema owners not to use up the money collected through service tax while a decision is reached on what is to be done with it,'' he said.

The row began when a service tax of 25 paise was introduced in 1994-95.

In 1999, it became Re.1 and, in 2002, it was increased to Rs.1.50.

The service tax, however, did not go to the Government, but to cinema owners.

The Kannada Film Producers' Association will be represented on the committee by Basant Kumar Patil, ``Rockline'' Venkatesh and Joe Simon, while K.V.Nagesh Kumar, Nanda Kumar and Venkata Ratnam will represent the distributors.

The exhibitors will name their representatives tomorrow. Parvathamma Rajkumar and Raghavendra Rajkumar will represent the film industry.

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