The government of Maharashtra will go back to the drawing board as it attempts to come up with new ways to monitor dance bars in the state. The Supreme Court had ruled that the bars were allowed to open, but there would be no cameras allowed in the performance areas of the bars, only at the entrances.
The Maharashtra Police has initially asked for camera to be installed inside the bars and over the performance areas, to ensure protection of the women and also to screen for illegal activities. This itself would be a logistical nightmare, watching live footage from thousands of dance bars every night in the state. A bigger nightmare would now be to deploy undercover cops at every bar, with the SC shutting down the request.
In 2005, the Maharashtra government had banned dance bars, which resulted in over 70,000 women losing jobs and livelihoods. The Supreme Court, in October 2014, overturned the ban, but has imposed a few conditions, the three foot high non removable partitions required to be constructed between the performance area and the audience, and CCTV cameras at the entrance being some of them.
There is a need to monitor illegal activity in these bars, since in the past they were the bedrock of the prostitution industry and the black money trade. But now the police will have to really come up with a solution to curb this. One way would be to make owners responsible for what happens at their bar, but even that may not be a practical solution.
