The thing Karnataka keeps calling a cinema ticket cess is now being fought by JioStar and Zee. On 28 October, Justice H.T. Narendra Prasad of the Karnataka High Court issued notice to the State Government and the Labour Department on a petition by the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation, JioStar India and Zee Entertainment Enterprises, and gave them the same interim shelter the theatres already have.
The case is W.P. No. 33292/2026. The order, as reported by LiveLawBiz and LiveLaw, says: “In these petitions also, [the Court] directs the respondents not to take any coercive steps against the petitioners till the next date of hearing.” The broadcasters were told to serve two sets of papers on the Government Advocate in the Multiplex Association of India’s petition, W.P. No. 30670/2026, and everything is to be heard together. Bar and Bench has the same account. Counsel for the petitioners is Gitanjali Miriam Mathew. They want the provisions declared unconstitutional so far as the cess goes, and the Labour Department notification of 10 September 2026 quashed.
Say the quiet part
We have written about this levy four times and every time, including by us, it has been described as a cess on cinema tickets. Two percent, collected at the box office, funding a welfare board for cine workers. That is how it was legislated, reported and argued.
Television broadcasters and a streaming major do not sell cinema tickets. They are in court because the State is asserting an obligation against them, and the protection they have just won is specifically against coercive action for not collecting the cess. Which means the levy, as the State is now applying it, reaches well past the ticket counter into the broader audiovisual business.
We are stating that carefully, because the reported orders do not spell out the mechanism by which a broadcaster is liable, and we are not going to invent one. But the fact of who is in the room tells you something the coverage has not. A measure sold as a small charge on moviegoers is being resisted by the largest television and streaming companies in the country, and they would not be spending Senior Counsel money on a levy they did not think applied to them.
The correction nobody else is making
There is a headline going around that says the Karnataka High Court has granted relief to cinema owners and halted collection of the two percent welfare cess. It has not.
Nothing in any of these orders stays the Act. Nothing stays the levy. LiveLaw and Bar and Bench are both explicit about it, and so was the 30 September order in the single-screen petition, where the Additional Advocate General gave an assurance about coercive action and the Court recorded that there was no stay. What exists is a series of promises not to act against the particular parties who have sued, until the next date.
The practical effect is a two-tier market, and it is getting worse rather than better. We reported on 30 September that the cess went live with three cinemas protected from it. At the start of October, three cinemas were protected and everybody else paid. As of 28 October, the protected list has grown to include a multiplex association, a broadcasters’ federation, JioStar and Zee. Every exhibitor, channel or platform that did not litigate is still exposed. The reward for complying is paying a cess your competitor has been excused from.
And a straight answer about 26 October
We told readers the theatre petitions were listed for 26 October. We went looking for what happened and we could not find it.
No order, no adjournment, no report, across LiveLaw, Bar and Bench, LawChakra and the Karnataka High Court dated listings for 26, 27 and 28 October. The 28 October reports do not mention a 26 October hearing at all. The most defensible reading is that nothing was disposed of and the matters have been folded into the consolidated listing, which LawChakra reports as 17 November 2026.
That date reaches us through the two weaker outlets in the set rather than LiveLaw or Bar and Bench, both of which say only “the next date of hearing”. So treat 17 November as reported, not confirmed. We would rather tell you where the floor of our knowledge is than round it up.
What is actually at stake
The underlying statute is the Karnataka Cine and Cultural Activists (Welfare) Act, 2024, with Sections 9(1), 9(2) and 11 under challenge, along with Rule 8(1) of the 2025 Rules. The purpose is not in dispute by anyone, including the petitioners: cine workers in Karnataka have close to no social security, and a funded welfare board is a reasonable answer to that.
The fight is over who pays and by what authority. And the longer it runs in this shape, the worse the outcome for the workers the Act exists for, because a cess collected from whoever did not hire a lawyer is not a funding model. It is a fine on compliance.
Bengaluru Baath Take
Six weeks in, this is no longer a story about two percent. It is a story about a State that legislated a welfare fund, lost its enforcement orders in court on 11 September, switched the levy on anyway from 30 September, and has since handed out exemption after exemption to every party willing to sue, while never once defending the levy on the merits.
Everybody involved should want this decided rather than managed. The exhibitors want certainty. The broadcasters want a ruling on whether the Act reaches them at all. And the cine workers, who are the only people in this with nothing to litigate about, want a welfare board with money in it. What they are all getting instead is a monthly round of interim protections and a hearing date that keeps moving.
17 November, reportedly. We will be there, and we will tell you if it slips again.
Sources
- LiveLaw: Karnataka High Court stays coercive action against TV broadcasters challenging cess
- LiveLawBiz: Karnataka HC bars coercive action against broadcasters including Zee and JioStar
- Bar and Bench: Karnataka High Court seeks State’s reply to JioStar and Zee plea
- LiveLaw: Court records State’s assurance of no coercive action against petitioner-theatres
- LawChakra: Cinema ticket cess, Karnataka
