The Madras High Court on Monday ordered notices returnable by July 16 to actor Vijay, film director A.R. Murugadoss and production house Sun Pictures on a public interest litigation (PIL) petition, which wanted them to pay ₹10 crore each as damages to Government Cancer Hospital at Royapettah here for having shown the actor smoking a cigarette in the first look poster of his upcoming movie Sarkar .
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice P.T. Asha directed the High Court Registry to issue notices to the Centre and the State government as well. S. Cyril Alexander, convenor of the Tamil Nadu People’s Forum for Tobacco Control (TNPFTC), a private organisation based at Kodambakkam here, filed the PIL petition accusing the film crew of having thrown the law on the subject to the winds.
According to the petitioner, Section 5(3) of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act of 2003 prohibits people from promoting the use of cigarettes or any other tobacco product. Similarly, the statutory rules, framed under the enactment, impose stringent conditions on display of tobacco products in movies and television programmes.
Nevertheless, the enforcement of the law on the subject was demonstrably very poor, the petitioner claimed and referred to the recent first look of the movie Sarkar as a classic example of the violations that galore.
He recalled that former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran, also a very popular film star of his time, had consciously avoided smoking in his films with the sole of intention of not wanting to encourage smoking.
It was during his tenure as Chief Minister that the Tamil Nadu Compulsory Censorship of Publicity Materials Act of 1987 was enacted to ensure that all publicity materials of every movie were censored. However, the provisions of the law were seldom implemented in the State after his death in December 1987, the petitioner lamented and sought for a direction to the State government to implemented it in letter and spirit.
He also wanted a corpus fund for the welfare of cancer patients to be created by imposing ₹10 crore each from Mr. Vijay, Mr. Murugadoss and Sun Pictures and utilise the money for the cancer hospital. The petition insisted on prosecuting all three under the 2003 enactment.
