Chennai: Madras high Court has ordered notice on a plea seeking direction to actor Vijay, ace director AR Murugadoss and Sun Network Private Limited to pay a compensation of Rs 10 crore for releasing a first look poster of their upcoming film Sarkar with picture of Vijay smoking a cigarette and for promoting smoking.
The First Bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice P.T Asha, before which a PIL came up for hearing on Monday, has issued notice to Government Pleader T.N Rajagopalan on behalf of the state government and Additional Solicitor General G. Rajagopalan on behalf of Union of India returnable by July 16, 2018.
State Convener of the Tamil Nadu People's Forum for Tobacco Control (TNPFTC), S. Cyril Alexander, in his petition, submitted that the Sarkar film, starred by actor Vijay in the lead, produced by Sun Pictures. Recently first look posters of the film were released in a function in Chennai. The posters carried the picture of actor smoking with heaps of smoke emanating from the actors mouth.
He submitted that the publicity material did not contain the mandatory certification as provisions of the Tamil Nadu Compulsory Censorship of Publicity Materials Act 1987. The actor, director and producers violated the provisions and liable to be punished under section 5 of the Act and Rule 9(2) of the rules 2004 of the above act as amended on October 27, 2011.
He noted that “Cinema industry especially the leading actors, should think over before accepting any role as to the impact and it is likely to cause on the society in general as well as youngsters and their fans.”
He said the producer, director and the actor of the film are Jointly responsible for violating the above act sought for a direction from the court to the Chairman, State Level Committee to Monitor the Violation to initiate prosecution against them and a direction to the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to initiate appropriate action against them.
The petitioner also sought direction to constitute a ‘Corpus Fund’ for the Welfare of the cancer patients by imposing damages on each for '10 crore and utilize the funds for government cancer hospital.
