Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association (AHAR) & Anr. v. The State of Maharashtra & Ors.
Background
Associations representing bar and restaurant owners, along with a union representing women bar dancers, challenged Maharashtra's 2016 law and rules regulating dance performances in hotels, restaurants and bars, arguing the conditions for obtaining a dance licence were so strict that not a single establishment had actually been granted one since the law was enacted. This followed an earlier round of litigation in which the State's outright ban on dance bars had already been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. The State defended the new law as a reasonable regulatory measure meant to prevent obscenity and protect women from exploitation.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that while the State could validly require a licence and prohibit genuinely obscene performances, several specific conditions in the rules were so unworkable or disproportionate that they amounted to an indirect, backdoor ban on dance bars rather than genuine regulation. It struck down the condition requiring dance venues to be at least one kilometre from any educational or religious institution (effectively impossible in a city like Mumbai), the mandatory CCTV camera requirement (an unconstitutional invasion of privacy), the condition banning service of alcohol where dances were performed, and the requirement that dancers be employed only on a fixed monthly salary (which restricted their freedom to work at multiple venues). It upheld other conditions as reasonable, such as restricting performance timings to 6 pm-11:30 pm and requiring written employment contracts with bank-deposited wages. The writ petitions were partly allowed on these terms.
Lesson Learnt
A law dressed up as "regulation" can still be struck down as unconstitutional if its actual conditions make the regulated activity impossible to carry out in practice; courts will look past the label of a statute to its real-world effect on fundamental rights such as the freedom to carry on an occupation and personal privacy.