HC stays movie ticket sale order

The Hyderabad High Court has ordered status quo in respect of the new system of cinema tickets sale in Hyderabad introduced by the state of Telangana. Turning sceptical towards the action of the authorities in asking all the theatres in Hyderabad to be run through a private firm, Justice S V Bhatt directed the Telangana government to place all relevant material before him in the batch of cases filed by cinema theatres of Hyderabad city challenging the recent orders of government forcing the theatres to sell tickets through a selected private portal and also to pay service charges to Film Development Corporation for getting their tickets money from the portal.

The Telangana government directed all the cinema theatres to



register with a private firm called Century Tech Systems Private limited and sell tickets through this portal. They have to collect their money earned through tickets sale from this portal. If the theatres fail to register themselves with the firm, then it will be deemed that all the shows are houseful and tax will be levied accordingly. 

The theatres have to pay 1.98 per cent of ticket rate to TSFDC. Kancherla Durga Prasad, counsel for the petitioners said that it amounts to creating monopoly and the theatres have to run around the private firm and TSFDC for the ticket amounts collected by portal. The judge ordered status quo to be maintained and directed case to be listed on December 19.