GST officials raid Telugu producers body?

A private producers guild-Associated Telugu Film Producers LLP- was raided by GST officials and some incriminate documents were reportedly seized from the premises. Actually, ATFPLLP is a 14-member body formed by a bunch of producers and ran parallelly to the interests of Telugu Film Producers Council which boasts of more than 800-odd members.

Producers Damodar Prasad, Kodali Venkateswara Rao, Nallamalapu Bujji, Dil Raju, Tagore Madhu, Paruchuri Prasad and Danayya are some of the key members in the rival body. “This is an illegal body formed by some producers just a few years ago since they want to usurp the funds of the legitimate producers’ body-Telugu Film Producers Council,” charges producer C N Rao, who claims that the members of the 3-years-old new body is depleting. “It started with 14 members and now it has come down to 10 members and will still go down further,” he adds. Coming to the raids, the officials were in for a shock when they found four companies with the same address and also found some documents of an overseas distributor.

“Lot of discrepancies along with GST and TDS violations were found and the officials were taken aback with such malpractices,” rues producer N Padmini, who claims that the Telugu Film Producers Council and Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce never had such lapses. “These two bodies have maintained clean records and paid all the taxes since they always believed in transparent accounting procedures. However, members of the new body are at loggerheads with each other,” she adds. Another producer Radha Rajeswari claims that the Telugu Film Producers’ Council will gain supremacy sooner than later, if discrepancies in the new body are anything to go by.

“It is just a matter of time, before genuine producers will return to the parent body and retain its glory because the Producers’ Guild is for the welfare of hundreds of small producers, pays their insurance premiums and also takes care of their disputes, if any,” she adds. No doubt, raids on the producers’ private body has taken T-town by surprise, since earlier, raids were conducted on top stars and producers and not on a trade body. “It has disgraced us,” concludes C N Rao.