Nothing is wrong with dance bars in Goa, BJP vice president Wilfred de Souza told mediapersons at a Press conference on Friday, even as some of his party members have expressed reservations over the issue.
Retorting to a query on whether he is agreeable with the form of entertainment, that has for long been controversial, the BJP leader said: “If alcohol which is the worst, is allowed to flow in the gutters of Goa, I can’t see why you have a problem against it (dance bars).”
The statement comes on the heels of the Supreme Court giving a go-ahead to dance bars and struck down a Maharashtra Government order banning them.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had earlier said that he was against this form of entertainment and would deny applicants for excise licences necessary to serve liquor.
Wilfred de Souza also said that if the Supreme Court had decided in favour of dance bars then it wasn’t right for anyone to oppose them.
“What’s wrong with dance bars nowIJ” he said, who is also the official spokesperson of the BJP’s Goa unit.
Earlier Michael lobo, a BJP legislator from Calangute, which is the epicentre of Goa’s tourism industry, had termed dance bars as fronts of prostitution and other illegal activities and that he would not allow such activity to take place in his constituency.