Making it clear that the judgment on dance bars in Maharashtra would not be reviewed, the Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed the state government for its efforts to mandatorily beam dance bar shows to
Making it clear that the judgment on dance bars in Maharashtra would not be reviewed, the Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed the state government for its efforts to mandatorily beam dance bar shows to local police stations via CCTVs to prevent obscenity.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh said such a condition for grant of licence impinged not only upon the individual’s fundamental right to privacy, but also to carry out a profession. It said such a condition had been imposed by the state despite the apex court judgment in 2014 holding as “unconstitutional” the state’s decision to close down all dance bars.
Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, however, justified the condition on the ground that people visiting public places cannot claim right to privacy. But when the bench did not agree, she sought a week’s time to have a re-look at the conditions.
Justice Singh, told the ASG, “We never expect a CCTV in a bar. It is highly embarrassing for anybody to be seen drinking. Some people even object to be being photographed while eating in restaurants. There is a right to privacy everywhere.”
Justice Misra observed, “Every individual has his own taste, style of eating or drinking and certainly would not like to be photographed or videographed. Police can interfere when there is an obscenity. Please tell them there is a judgment and in that judgment it has been said on Constitutional parameters. Prima facie we are against partitions and CCTV. Dance has to be understood as an art bereft of obscenity. It is an art. If it ceases to be an art, then you can regulate.”
The state insisted that those drinking or watching dance shows in bars are not entitled to privacy, coming as it does in the wake of growing criticism in the country about certain elements indulging in moral policing.
The apex court had in November last year pulled up the stated government for not complying with its October 15, 2015 order, asking it to consider granting licences of dance bars to hoteliers and had ordered it to process such pleas within two weeks.
It had also raised questions over the state government laws banning dance bars and said as to “how individual morality, perceptive morality and selective morality can merge into collective and legal morality”.
