New Delhi: Dance bars can again run in Maharashtra with the Supreme Court on Tuesday upholding a Bombay high court verdict quashing the state government's ban on dance bars.

Deciding on the constitutionality of the ban on dance performances in bars in Maharashtra imposed under the Bombay Police (Amendment) Act of 2005, the apex court gave its order in favour of the bar owners and dancers’ union who had contended that the ban on bar dances in some establishments while permitting them in others was contrary to the rule of equality enshrined in Article 14.



The Act had prohibited ‘any type of dancing’ in an “eating house, permit room or beer bar” while allowing dance performances in three star and above hotels and other ‘elite’ establishments.



The state government had sought to justify the ban in public interest, alleging that bar dancing is obscene and vulgar and depraves morals, fuels trafficking and prostitution and causes exploitation of women who dance in the bars.

On the other hand, various organisations representing dance bars, restaurants and bar girls had argued that the preamble of the Bombay Police (Amendment) Act, 2005, which had been struck down by the high court as unconstitutional, holds that dance performances for public amusement were permissible.

These organisations had also submitted that there were over 70,000 women engaged in dance bars and several of them had already committed suicide due to unemployment and financial crunch.

They had said that with as many as 72% of the bar girls being married and 68 per cent being sole bread earners of their family, the state government's order has rendered them jobless and had been rightly struck down as arbitrary and unconstitutional by the high court