VADODARA, JAN 20: The Maharashtra Entertainment Tax Department is planning a crackdown on cable operators on the ground that they have been fudging viewership figures and duping the authorities of crores in taxes annually.Alleging that the figures the operators produce is not even half the viewership, highly-placed officials in Gandhinagar told The Indian Express that they were planning a city-wise crackdown in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar within a month.According to official figures, there are 40,000-odd cable connections in Vadodara, which has a population of about 15 lakhs. Likewise, Ahmedabad, with double the population, and Surat, with 22 lakhs of people, are said to have 70,000 and 100,000 cable households respectively.Under the laws, a cable operator has to deposit Rs 6 per connection per month in advance every quarter; the deposit, thus, varies with the number of connections. And these are the figures that sources in the State Entertainment Tax Departmentdescribe as grossly understated.Claiming that the department lost out on at least Rs 1 crore annually because of the incorrect viewership figures presented by cable operators in Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Surat, sources bolster their arguments by highlighting the rapid strides made by TV in the popularity charts.``Drastic steps are in the offing in this respect'', acknowledged C M Leuva, State Commissioner of Entertainment Tax. ``But because we're understaffed - Vadodara city, for instance, has only one inspector to keep an eye on the claimed 40,000 connections - we're going to form teams of officers from all cities and launch a crackdown on the six bigger cities of the State.''The story, however, does not end there. At the other end are the cable operators, who claim they're indiscriminately being pressured to cough up more taxes. Said Dharmesh Pala, Kirit Erda and Soumil Desai, all city-based cable operators, ``The inspections are general and sporadic; never at a micro or macro level. Moreover,though we pay taxes, we have no safeguards. The telephone or electricity or roads department is forever damaging our cables.''``If the government promises some safety to our antennae or cables, we're ready to pay our taxes regularly and honestly'', said another cable operator on condition of anonymity. ``But we're sandwiched between anti-social elements in our own circle and government officials.``As recently as January 17, a prominent cable operator in Fatehgunj was beaten up by a business rival. According to the FIR (registered under Sections 323 and 114 of the Indian Penal Code), both wanted to grab a connection,'' he adds.
