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Dance bar (India)


Dance bar is a term used in India to refer to bars in which adult entertainment in the form of dances by relatively well-covered women are performed for male patrons in exchange for cash. Dance bars used to be present only in Maharashtra, but later spread across the country, mainly in cities. Dance bars were banned in the state of Maharashtra, in August 2005, with the passing of the Maharashtra Police (Amendment) Act, 2005. Subsequently, the government shut down dance bars. However, many continued to flourish as late as 2011, although in a clandestine way in Mumbai and its outskirts. Mumbai alone had 700 dance bars, at their peak in April 2005 when it was banned, though officially only 307 dance bars existed, the rest were illegal, while the figures for rest of the state was 650 dance bars in total. In all they employed 150,000 people, including 75,000 bar girls. These bars functioned as fronts for prostitution. After the ban was enforced, no rehabilitation program was initiated for the nightclub dancers, known as bar-balas. Many moved to Dubai and other Middle Eastern countries, while others went to New Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad.

The ban was first struck down by the Bombay High Court on 12 April 2006, and the verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court in July 2013.The Hindu reported that the number of women employed in bars in Maharashtra was around 20,000 in September 2013. Most of them were waitresses or singers at orchestra bars.

The Maharashtra government banned dance bars again in 2014 by an Ordinance, but this too was found "unconstitutional" by the Supreme Court in October 2015, allowing Mumbai dance bars to reopen.

The first dance bars were in Khalapur in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, in the early 1980s. The first dance bar in Pune district was hotel Kapila International.

Mumbai Police carried out a raid on 52 dance bars throughout Mumbai on 24 February 2004, in an overnight operation. This was the first ever large scale raid on dance bars. This was followed by another raid on 27 March 2004. The two raids scared bar owners, who claimed that they paid regular bribes to policemen to keep their business running, and alleged that either the police "want us to hike haftas or they want us to fund election campaigns of certain politicians."


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