Indian veteran actor and BJP politician Jaya Prada has been sentenced to six months in jail by a court in Chennai in an old case. A fine of Rs 5,000 has also been imposed on her as she was accused of not paying the Employee State Insurance (ESI) money to workers of her theatre.
Jaya Prada and her brother Raj Babu were partners of Jayaprada Cine Theatre. The second metropolitan magistrate court in Egmore held both of them guilty of failing to comply with the statutory obligations of payment of contributions due to the ESI corporation.
The ESI corporation filed a complaint against Jaya Prada and her brother for failing to pay Rs 8,17,794 from November 1991 to September 2002 . The court ordered the accused to pay the due amount to the complainant.
ESI stated the accused committed an offence of non-payment of contributions under Section 85(a) of The Employees State Insurance Act that is punishable under Section 85 (i) (b) of the Act.
Joya Prada became elected a Rajya Sabha MP and then a Lok Sabha MP. She joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019. Joya remains one of the most popular and influential actors in the Hindi and Telugu film industries. Later, she left the film industry and joined the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1994.
