India’s online gaming industry is expected to reach $3 billion by 2022. We now see the gaming industry promptly approaching the Karnataka High Court to appeal against the recent Karnataka amendments to the Karnataka Police Act, 1963 that banned all forms of gambling in the state, including online gambling. However, the honourable high court of Tamil Nadu struck down the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act terming it as “excessive and disproportionate” and being ultra vires. Online games involving skill continued to be exempted from the application of the restrictions under the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act. Unlike the case of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the Tamil Nadu law did not put a blanket ban on offering online games. In fact, the ban of online gambling by the government of Tamil Nadu was appealed against in the Madras High Court. It is not an easy issue to resolve, as the governments have been accused of interfering with the lives of people.īusinesses that provided such services and built up multi-billion-dollar valuations, have taken up cudgels against the state governments for banning online gambling. As a responsible government, one has to address the situation. However, in all cases, they were driven by the need to protect ordinary citizens who were falling for the instantaneous, anywhere, anytime gambling access that were ruining lives and families leading to suicides. Others maintained the fine difference between game of chance and game of skill.

The bans had different hues with some states banning all kinds of online games that involved betting. Starting with Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Sikkim and Nagaland have also banned online games that involve any money.

The words gaming and gambling are being interchangeably used and essentially imply playing online games after betting on the outcome with real money. The Philippines banned online gambling not because they were harming the youth or the general population, but because the live streaming of the games was choking the internet.Ĭloser home, we saw a string of attempts to ban online gaming or gambling. However, this again changed in April of this year.

Reasons why gambling should be illegal