Government has initiated process of forming law and sought AG’s opinion, says Fadnavis
Clarifying the state’s stand on dance bars, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday said that the state is totally against dance bars and would bring a new bill to ban them. The CM also reminded that when his party was in the opposition they had supported the Congress-NCP government’s decision to ban dance bars.
The chief minister said that in 2013, the Supreme Court had upheld the right of women bar dancers to follow their profession and dismissed the government’s appeal to ban them. It had asked the government to come up with a new law banning dance bars, but the government had amended the law and submitted to the Supreme Court, the CM added.
“The government has initiated the process of forming the regulations and sought opinion of the advocate general to make a new law. Till the law comes into force, we have to obey the SC order,” Mr Fadnavis said.
The state government will issue permission for opening dance bars if applicants fulfill 18 stringent conditions. The new rules include disallowance of showering of currency notes on bar dancers and also a compulsory live CCTV feed of dance bars to the police control room.
The CM said, “We have finalised the terms and conditions like specific size of the hall, what should be there, the distance between the bar dancer and customer, number of dancers are among them.”
“Also people cannot throw money in the dance bar, the bar dancer will not leave her podium, the dance bar room will be under surveillance of the close circuit television (CCTV) which will be monitored live by the local police from the police station are a few other conditions that dance bar owner has to fulfill. The police will crosscheck and test before issuing the permission,” Mr Fadnavis further added.
The CM also said the police has so far turned down 34 applications to open dance bars as the applicants could not fulfill the conditions.
“As of now no one has been permitted to set up dance bars. If one approaches the police the permission will be given purely on merit basis,” the CM said.
