The Bombay high court recently declared that restaurants are prohibited from operating hookah parlours on their licensed premises. Additionally, the court asserted that serving hookah, whether herbal or not, from service areas of eating establishments is not permitted under their license.
“It cannot be countenanced that grant of a license to conduct an eating house is deemed to include a license to conduct hookah activities,” said the division bench of justice Girish Kulkarni and justice RN Laddha while rejecting a petition filed by Sayli Parkhi, an entrepreneur who owns M/s. Parkhi Hospitalities and runs The Orange Mint restaurant in Chembur.
She approached the high court after a health officer from the M/West ward of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) ordered the restaurant to stop serving hookah in its service area within seven days on April 18, 2023. The health officer also warned that failure to comply would result in the revocation of the restaurant’s eating house license.
The restaurant owner argued that Section 394 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, which governs license conditions, does not pertain to the matter of hookah activity in a restaurant.
In contrast, the BMC asserted that obtaining an eating house license under Section 394 of the MMC Act did not authorize the petitioner to engage in any hookah-related activities, including the serving of herbal hookah, within the licensed establishment.
The high court upheld the BMC’s stance and dismissed the restaurant owner’s claim that the eating house license granted to her authorized “hookah activities” or the provision of hookah services on the licensed premises. The bench deemed the owner’s argument to be “completely baseless.”
“The canvass of Section 394 of the MMC Act, is quite broad to take within its ambit articles, trade, operations, which are dangerous to life, health or which are likely to create nuisance, as quite extensively described in the provision,” said the bench. “Thus, a narrow interpretation cannot be attributed to Section 394.”
“If the connotation of Section 394 of the MMC Act as canvassed on behalf of the petitioner, is accepted, it would be nothing but doing violence to the said provision, as such interpretation would mean that once an eating house license is granted, it would deem to include permission to conduct activities of a hookah parlour, or other similar activities,” the court said.
Regarding the serving of “herbal” hookah, the court noted that even the eating house may not be able to regulate the ingredients of the hookah once the apparatus is in the possession of the customers, let alone the civic authorities.
The judges said in a restaurant or an eating house, where children, women and elderly visit for refreshments/eating, it cannot be expected that hookah is one of the menu items. “This would amount to an absolute nuisance in so far as an eating house is concerned,” the court added.
In addition, the court dismissed the petitioner’s claim that the order was arbitrary, stating that the civic order explicitly outlined the violation of license conditions supported by available evidence. The court also highlighted that the order was issued after the civic authorities conducted two inspections of the establishment and issued show cause notices to the owners.