Till Tuesday, Mumbai police headquarters II which is the licensing authority for dance bars, had received 64 applications, even as industry sources claimed that an equal number of fresh applications are going to be made in the next couple of weeks. The fact is that traditionally business in dance bars is conducted in cash.
On 24th November 2016, in an interim order, the Supreme Court had asked the state government to approve applications for restarting dance bars. In the first week after the order, the police had received 10 applications for new dance bar. The number of applications in the corresponding weeks fell drastically as liquidity crunch started affecting business across sectors.
As per the sources that after a lull for about three weeks, applications started deluging in the last week of December as markets showed signs of revival.
The owner of Uma Palace Bar and restaurant at Mulund – Bharat Singh Thakur said that following the released of enough cash by government, we are hopeful that conditions will improve in the next 2-3 months. We are in no hurry to start business after getting licences.
He further said that Many dance bar owners who had surrendered licences following the 2005 ban, or those who had converted into orchestra bars are in queue seeking fresh licences.
The officer said that the premises licence fees for dance bars has increased to Rs2 lakh from Rs 2,000 per annum. In the prevailing cash crunch, how are they going to run the business?
Conditions for New Dance Bar:
Those conditions included mandatory installation of CCTV cameras within the dance bar, their locations must be at least a kilometre away from educational or religious institutions, a ban on serving alcohol in the performance area and restrictive timings – 6 pm to 11.30 pm.
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