The Maharashtra Government is contemplating extending the ban on the dance performances to three and five star hotels as well, in an effort to remove the lacunae in the 2005 amendment to the Bombay Police Act, which exempts the star hotels from the ban.
less than a week after the Supreme Court upheld a Bombay High Court ruling and lifted ban on the dance bars in the State, the State Government indicated that it would extend the ban to three and five star hotels to remove disparity of its 2005 decision. Given that one of the grounds for the apex court lifting the ban on dance bars was that the 2005 State legislation amending the Bombay Police Act was discriminatory in nature as it had exempted three and five star hotels from the ban, the State Government is toying with the idea of withdrawing dance performance licences given to 3-star hotels and above.
Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil indicated that the State Government would not be averse to withdrawing dance performance licences given to three and five star hotels to remove any disparity. “The State Government will take a decision in two days on the verdict of Supreme Court that upheld the Bombay High Court’s decision to quash the ban on dance bars,” Patil said, while replying to a question by MNS legislator Bala Nandgaonkar in the State Assembly.
Responding to queries by Nandgaonkar and senior PWP legislator Ganpatrao Deshmukh who wanted to know as to what steps were being taken by the State Government on the apex court ruling on dance bars, Patil said: “We have sought legal opinion from experts in Delhi and Mumbai. The State Government is of the view that the ban on dance bars should continue”. Within the next two days, the Government will inform the House about its stand on the steps being taken on the Supreme Court ruling,” Patil said. On its part, the State Government has set a committee of experts to frame its response to last week’s Supreme Court’s ruling lifting the ban on dance bars.
While it is not clear whether the State Government will file a review petition or challenge the apex court’s July 16 verdict (lifting the ban on dance bars) before a Constitutional bench of the apex court, there are indications that the State Government may go in for further amendments in the Bombay Police Act to remove the partiality towards vis-a-vis three and five star hotels. It may be recalled that the petitioners in the dance bars ban litigation — comprising mainly the Association of Hotels and Restaurants (AHAR), the Dance Bar Owners’ Association and the Bharatiya Bar Girls’ Union — had argued that the State legislation was discriminatory in nature, considering that the State Government had chosen to exempt 3-star and 5-star hotels from the ban order. This, they had contended, amounted infringement of Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality before law.
On its part, the State Government had justified its decision to ban dance bars, saying that a majority of them had become pick-up joints for prostitution business. It also contested the petitioners’ argument that the legislation infringed the bar dancers’ constitutional right to earn a living, by saying that the girls did not have a free choice to become bar dancers. For, most of the bar dancers had been lured into the profession by middlemen with job promises.