Aishwarya Rai - Sachin default on windmill taxes

Aishwarya Rai, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, several others and political leaders who own windmills in Satara’s Patan block, haven’t paid taxes to local village panchayats, the legislative assembly was informed during question hour on Friday.

A debate ensued in the house on a question raised by Shambhuraj Desai, a Shiv Sena member from Patan, in Satara district. Taking note of the issue, speaker Babasaheb Kupekar directed the state to take steps to recover the tax and grants, and inform him about the progress before the state legislature’s budget session.

“Stars like Aishwarya Rai have their windmills here. They are not paying their dues and we are simply watching,” Kupekar said, asking the minister of state for rural affairs, Siddharam Mhetre, act on the matter immediately.

Seeking government clarification on the issue, Desai said that out of the outstanding dues of Rs16 crore, only Rs36 lakh have been recovered so far. Joining the debate, BJP leader Eknath Khadse said, “I also have a list of ruling party members who own windmills. Can we not ask them to pay the dues when poor village panchayats are suffering?”

In his defence, Mhetre said the government was considering a proposal to streamline the process of recovering dues. However, Khadse asked, “Why were the dues not recovered for so many years, when the concerned law of 1999 is clear on the matter?”
The speaker lamented that the government had not initiated any action for the recovery of taxes. He directed the minister to take steps to recover the dues before the next session of the state legislature.

Aishwarya Rai masters Tamil

Mumbai, December 20: Aishwarya Rai has many hidden talents. One is her ability to grasp languages quickly. This, the unit of Shankar's Robot discovered, while shooting with her. She was required to hold her own against the glib-talking Rajnikanth.

Tamil isn't really familiar territory for Aishwarya, so Rajnikanth and director Shankar came prepared for several re takes.

Never a problem

To everyone's surprise, Aishwarya got a grip of the language in no time at all. Says a source from the set, "She was soon rattling off the dialogues and getting a hang of the emotions with equal skill in both the Hindi and Tamil takes. So much so, that Rajnikanth, who has waited for decades to work with Aishwarya was taken aback."

When asked about the incident, Aishwarya laughs, "Regional languages have never been a problem. I did a Bengali film Chokher Bali and I was able to get a hang of the complex intonations, though later they needed a particular sing-song tone and my voice had to be dubbed."

Back to basics

But the buzz in Robot is that they are planning to retain her Tamil lines in the final print. Says the actress from Ooty, "I'm not familiar with Tamil. My mother tongue Tulu is very different from Tamil. But you must remember my first film Iruvar was in Tamil and I had to say lengthy lines in that film. From my beginnings with Mani Ratnam in Tamil to this my second Tamil film of my career.... it's been quite a journey."