The Supreme Court on Wednesday came down on Maharashtra government for putting certain conditions for granting licences to dance bars across the state like providing live CCTV feed of performances to police and segregating the dance area from the restaurant.
Why the stage should be covered from all sides? Why there should a non-transparent partition between dance area and restaurant area? The dance is an art. Why are you imposing the condition? As long as nothing obscene is happening.Supreme Court Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh
The bench was critical of some pre-requisites fixed by the state police for granting licences to dance bar owners and said the condition that there should be segregation of dance area from that of restaurant presumes that performance would be “obscene”.
The bench told Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, who appeared for the state, and told her to clarify the stand on some contentious conditions on 1st March, the next date of hearing.
The dance bar association, represented by senior advocate Jayant Bhushan, has red flagged certain conditions. The owners will not be allowed to “add or alter” anything in the premises except “without the written permission of the Competent Authority i.e., DCP (HQ-1) for Mumbai or concerned DCP/SP for other areas,” the condition said. Bhushan said that these are “regressive ones” and needed to be amended.
Bhushan also objected to the condition that makes it compulsory to dance bar owners to “ensure that adequate number of CCTV cameras which will live feed continuously to police control room be installed to cover the entire premises which will record the entire daily performance and the same would be monitored by a specially appointed person on a monitor/display.”
The daily recording of last 30 days would preserved and will be made available to any competent authority as and when required for viewing.Jayant Bhushan, Lawyer, Dance Bar Association
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