PANJIM: The Goa cabinet on Wednesday resolved to refund the security deposit of the organisers of the Sunburn electronic dance music (EDM) festival after settling all the outstanding dues of various government departments pending for almost a decade ago.
In August 2019, the festival organisers had written to the government seeking to settle of past pending dues of the Sunburn EDM festival including the charges of the police bandobast. The organisers owed Rs 1,05,78,829 to the government for the festival held from 2011 to 2014.
Following the letter the Chief Secretary sought details of dues from the concerned departments such as Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Commercial Taxes and Directorate of Health Services.
In 2015, the organisers had paid Rs 1.25 crore as security deposit to the Department of Tourism. From this amount Rs 24.72 lakh was adjusted towards service tax payable by the organisers in 2012 and 2013 and little over Rs one crore was transferred to the Goa Police towards outstanding police bandobast and traffic arrangement charges. However, Goa Police informed that over Rs 22.38 lakh was outstanding towards service tax payable by the organisers and agreed to refund the excess amount Rs 14,808.
In 2019, the organisers paid security deposit of Rs 2.25 crore to the Department of Tourism which included Rs 75 lakh towards outstanding dues against all outstanding dues for the past events, as per the directives of the High Court of Bombay at Goa.
An amount of over Rs 1.37 crore from the security deposit was transferred to the Commercial Tax Department through book adjustment and an amount of over Rs 1.02 crore remained with the Department of Tourism.
After receiving no dues certificates from the concerned departments, the cabinet decided to refund the balance amount of security deposit of Rs 79.73 lakh to the organisers.
When contacted, Deputy Chief Minister Babu Ajagaonkar said that the cabinet decided to refund the security deposit of the Sunburn organisers after recovering all outstanding dues of various government departments including charges of the police bandobast.
The Sunburn festival has been organised in Goa seven times since 2010.
