The Kerala High Court on Tuesday set aside the government decision to levy luxury tax on cable TV operators with a subscriber base of 7,500 and above.

A Bench comprising Justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair and Justice Babu Mathew P. Joseph declared as unconstitutional and discriminatory the government decision while allowing a batch of writ petitions filed by operators challenging the decision.

According to the petitioners, luxury tax of Rs 5 per connection on operators had been introduced in April 2006 by amending the Kerala Tax on Luxuries Tax Act. However, the government had exempted cable operators with less than 7,500 connections from the luxury tax in 2011 with retrospective effect.

Operators’ plea

The petitioners contended that the operators with 7,500 and above connections had been discriminated against and the decision was violative of Article 14 of the Constitution (equality before law). Besides, no luxury tax had been levied on the direct-to-home providers.

They said the service provided by them did not come under the definition of luxury.

The State government contended that the classification was reasonable.

The court said there was no reasonable classification between the operators as far as the subscriber base was concerned. The court pointed out that the Supreme Court had held that tax should be levied without discrimination.

The court observed that that the decision had violated Article 14 of the Constitution.

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