Despite the order of a weeklong partial shutdown by Karnataka Chief Minister in a bid to prevent the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) effective from Saturday, some restaurants and bars had kept their establishments open for businesses.
According to an order issued by the Karnataka Excise Department, the state government had ordered CL-4 license holders to remain shut. CL-4 licenses are issued to night clubs that have dance floors.
Bars and restaurants were open in the central business district and many bars located along Indiranagar’s 100 ft road and 12th main were also open. Several bars and restaurants were also open in Whitefield and South Bengaluru.
This caused a lot of confusion among bar and restaurant owners with several residents also putting in multiple queries on whether they could be open or not.
The Excise Department order, a copy of which is available with TNM does not mention that bars had to be shut. “Bars where people can sit and drink are allowed to be open. Night clubs are where there are dance floors. These are to be closed because they are categorised as crowded areas,” health department officials told TNM.
The Excise Department issued separate licenses for different kinds of establishments. Night clubs run on a CL-4 license while the Karnataka Exvise Department categorises bars as refreshment rooms and issues the CL-9 license to such establishments. Hotels are given CL-7 license.
The confusion started as the Chief Minister had said on Friday that all pubs, night clubs, movie theatres, conferences, seminars and events like weddings were shuttered for a week starting Saturday.
Even in the directives issued by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Commissioner BH Anil Kumar via Twitter, there is no clear mention of restaurants and bars although pubs and nightclubs feature in the list of preventive closure.
However, an Indiranagar resident speaking to Deccan Herald, asked how this would serve the purpose of the lockdown in other places as usually large crowds assemble in these joints. This, the residents feared, would add to the spread of the disease and pinned the blame on the excise department and BBMP for the ambiguity.