BOMBAY, 16 April 2006 — Cracks have developed between the Congress and its coalition partner Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the Democratic Front government of Maharshtra state. The Congress has put the blame for the setback the state government suffered when the ordinance to ban the dance bars was thrown out by the high court on the NCP and Home Minister R.R. Patil.
In a provocative statement directed at the NCP, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) spokesman Sanjay Nirupam welcomed the court verdict and defending the dance bar girls said that the issue concerned the livelihood of thousands and this should have been considered on humanitarian grounds.
As a teaser and tongue-in-cheek clarification, Nirupam said that the DF government was free to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Confessing that nobody can deny that there were loopholes in the ordinance when it was framed, Nirupam said these shortcomings were confirmed by the court. The government took the decision in haste, without thinking of alternative sources of livelihood for the thousands of workers, Nirpuman said. Hussain Dalwai, a prominent Congress leader and former minister also lashed out at Patil and the NCP and said when Patil took the decision to ban dance bars, he had a limited agenda.
“His concern was limited to the rich and spoilt children mainly from the cash-rich western Maharashtra, who splurged money, got into wrong acts and invited AIDS. The home minister never gave a thought to the rehabilitation of thousands of women who depended on dance bars for their livelihood,” he said.
The All India Congress Committee general secretary in charge of Maharashtra, Mrs. Margaret Alva, said that she had pointed out the loopholes when the ordinance was formulated last year.
She has also said that there was the issue of discrimination between star category hotels and ordinary dance bars was a lacuna, but then she was told the law and judiciary department had looked into the mater and it was fine, hence I kept quiet, Alva said.
Adding further fuel to the fire, which further aggravated the tense political situation between the Congress and the NCP, was the statement of Kripashankar Singh, a former Congress minister of state of home, who directing his ire at the deputy chief minister and home minister R R Patil, demanded that the government reserved jobs for dance bar girls in the government and private sector, and reminded Patil of his commitment in the legislature last year, when Patil had agreed to offer jobs to dance bars girls in stat-run employment guarantee scheme (EGS).
Missing no opportunity to corner the NCP, the Congress thrust the dance-bar blame on the NCP and dumped the onus of several loopholes in the government’s Ordinance on its collation partner the NCP. Relations between both the coalition partners had been strained for quite some time Hitting back at the Congress, the general secretary of the NCP, Gurunath Kulkarni sent a message loud and clear that the NCP would not take things lying down from the Congress. The decision to ban dance bar was taken jointly by the coalition partners and the NCP is not willing to accept the charge of the Congress. It’s absurd now of the Congress to lay the blame for the failure of the Ordinance on the NCP. It’s disgusting, grossly unfair and the statement of the Congress is condemnable, an angry Kulkarni said.
Defending the Congress allegations hurled at him, Patil maintained that the government’s decision to ban dance bars was taken through political consensus and the Bill was passed in the state Assembly.
Despite the Court lifting the ban on the dance bars, the owners of the restaurants and dance bar owners, are threading cautiously, avoiding to take any risk and open the dance bars in view of the statement of the state government that it would appeal against the judgment of the Bombay High Court in the Supreme Court. Till then, nobody is interested to flung open the doors of the dance bars.
