New Delhi, April 22: Dance bar girls of Mumbai, who have been thrown out of their jobs by the Congress-led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra, have knocked at Sonia Gandhi?s door for justice.

A delegation of bar girls and non-government organisation activists met the Congress president in the capital today and urged her to advise the Vilasrao Deshmukh government to review its recent ban on dance bars.

An eight-member delegation led by the president of the Mumbai-based Indian Bar Girls Union, Varsha Kala, asked Sonia to direct the state government to either lift the ban or initiate measures for rehabilitating over 75,000 girls thrown out of jobs by the order.

The delegation, during the 15-minute meeting with the Congress president, impressed on her that besides directly affecting the livelihood of bar girls, the ban had also jeopardised the income of lakhs of people dependent on them.

Varsha said Sonia promised to look into the case ?sympathetically? and review the rehabilitation of the girls who had lost their jobs.

The Congress virtually defended the state government?s action, denying suggestions that the ruling combine was seeking to hijack from the Shiv Sena the role of moral police in the country?s financial capital.

?The ban is a limited subject confined to just one state. The state government has its own reasons for imposing the ban as there were apparently complaints about misuse of dance bars,? Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma said.

?The state government is seized of the matter,? he added. Sharma, however, agreed that rehabilitation was an issue that needed to be addressed.