Covid: Chandigarh admin bans hookah bars

District magistrate Mandip Singh Brar issued the order on Tuesday for banning hookah in public places for the next 60 days to prevent the spread of Covid-19

The UT administration on Tuesday banned hookahs in all public places including, hotels, restaurants, taverns, bars, and hookah bars, to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

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District magistrate Mandip Singh Brar issued the order for banning hookah in public places for the next 60 days under Section 144 of the CrPC.

Consequently, hookah bars are banned in Chandigarh with “respect to their offering hookahs to the visitors,” the order states.

The DM in his order observed, “The hookah in many of these bars is smoked/consumed by the people/customers through a common bowl, pipe and a hose having mouthpiece, which is susceptible to physical mouth to mouth touch of many persons, thus posing danger to human life, health and safety by becoming a cause of as well as leading to the transmission and spread of pandemic COVID-19 in Chandigarh.”

“Hookah bars are operational in Chandigarh in a clandestine way and are serving flavoured hookahs including tobacco molasses containing nicotine, which is highly injurious to the health of people and at times there is a suspicion that apart from tobacco, other harmful narcotic chemicals are also mixed with tobacco molasses served in these hookah bars,” states the order.

Any person violating this order shall be punished under Section 188 of the IPC.