Ilaiyaraaja has been in the spotlight for a week after his analogy between Prime Minister Modi and Dr Ambedkar has sparked controversy with a pile of condemnations from several people. Amid receiving flak on an unprecedented scale, the legendary musician has asserted that he will not take his comparison back and he also had got backing from the state and the national BJP leaders. 

As he has been criticized by the followers of Ambedkar and several political leaders, it has now come to the revelation that Ilaiyaraaja has received summonses from the GST body for allegedly evading the tax and these summonses were sent days before the musician had drawn a comparison between Modi and Ambedkar. According to reports, the GST unit in Chennai has sent a summons to Ilaiyaraaja to appear before the team in connection with evading the service tax. 

The Chennai Zonal Unit of the Directorate General of Goods and Service Tax Intelligence has on February 28 sent a notice to Ilaiyaraaja in which it has directed him to appear for investigation on March 10 after he had failed to pay the service tax. He was instructed to bring proper documents. In the notice, the Senior Intelligence Officer said, "In exercise of the powers conferred on me under Section 14 of the Central Excise Act, 1944, read with Section 83 of the Finance Act 1994 and Section 70 read with Section 174(2) of the Goods and Service Tax Act, 2017, and Rules made under the said Act, I hereby summon you to submit the documents at the address given above on 10.03.2022 at 11.00 hrs." 

However, the reports say that he had skipped the notice and didn't appear before the unit. Three weeks later, the GST unit had sent a second notice to Ilaiyaraaja on March 21 asking him to appear on March 28 at 11 am. It is still to be known whether Ilaiyaraaja has appeared before the unit after the second notice but his foreword supporting Modi days after the allegation of service tax evasion has put the notices under significance and the development has been going viral with more attention. 

As his foreword has been in the limelight, several critics claim that he had hailed Modi to get rid of the investigations from the GST intelligence unit. Recently, questioning Ilaiyaraaja's motive behind supporting Modi, popular music director James Vasanthan has said that Ilaiyaraaja's remarks about Modi had sparked a notion of whether he is expecting a prestigious award or an MP seat. Quoting this, the social media users spread that the veteran musician could be expecting relief from the allegations of tax evasion. 

Ilaiyaraaja has made a weird comparison between Ambedkar and Modi in his foreword for a book that was launched on April 14, on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti. In the book titled  'Ambedkar & Modi: Reformer's Ideas, Performer's Implementation', Ilaiyaraaja has said that there were parallels between Ambedkar and Modi as both of them saw poverty and stifling social structures from close quarters and worked to dismantle them. 

About the book, the foreword by the maestro said that the book brings out some striking parallels between the personalities of Dr BR Ambedkar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He had penned, "Both these striking personalities succeeded against odds that people from socially disempowered sections face. Both dreamt big for India, but both are also practical men who believe in action rather than mere thought exercises." 

The legendary musician has further turned heads by stating that Ambedkar would have been proud of Prime Minister Modi for his work for the progress of women, including criminalising triple talaq and the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme. By highlighting that the book is an attempt to study the interaction of India's development journey under Prime Minister Modi with the ideals and vision of Dr Ambedkar, Ilaiyaraaja's foreword says that Modi has strengthened the legal safeguards for socially marginalized communities through constitutional protections.