HC dismiss petitions seeking order for conduct of dance prog

The Madras High Court today dismissed a batch of petitions seeking a direction to relevant officials to permit organising cultural dance programs in connection with annual temple festivals.
"...The petitioners are private individuals who seek to make use of the temple festivals for dance programmes and not for propitiating the presiding deities of those temples, but for arousing basic instincts of those assembled there under the garb of devotees," Justice V Ramasubramanyan said.
He said that India was a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979.

"Almost all the petitions were filed with a common prayer to direct the Inspector of Police or the Superintendent of Police of districts to grant permission to them to conduct cultural dance programs in connection with annual temple festivals on different dates during the months of February and March 2014," he said.
A direction to the authorities be granted only in a case where there was a statutory duty imposed upon the officer concerned and there was a failure on the part of such officer to discharge the statutory obligation, the judge noted.
The judge also dismissed a writ petition filed by one hotelier seeking a direction to Commissioner of Police to grant permission to conduct cultural programs in his hotel premises.