There will be an end to online gaming with stakes in Tamil Nadu soon, chief minister MK Stalin said on Thursday in the state assembly in response to a question raised by AIADMK MLA R Vaithilingam.
The erstwhile AIADMK government under former chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami in November 2020 amended a 90-year law to ban online games including online rummy and online poker with stakes on the ground that teenagers and young adults were losing money and cited cases of suicide.
A batch of petitioners challenged this in the Madras High Court and in August 2021, the first bench of the court overturned the ban.
The court said that the amendment is so unequivocally audacious that it rules out any element of choice that an individual may exercise and added that some regulation can still be exercised. Stalin pointed out that cases related to online gaming are pending in the Supreme Court and that his government will follow a legal route towards ensuring a ban.
Since there have been several suicides connected to online gaming and gambling, a “permanent full stop” to this will be brought soon, said Stalin. The chief minister reiterating this stand was applauded by the legislators in the house.
On Wednesday, the AIADMK’s ally PMK’s founder S Ramadoss too had urged the state government to ban the same recent suicides in the state which he claimed were to be due to loss of money in online gaming. The suicides should not end up being like a daily weather report, he had said.
Last September, Karnataka became the third state in India to ban online gaming after Tamil Nadu and Kerala by bringing in a legislation. The ban has been challenged in the Karnataka high court and hearing is on-going in the case.
Cyber law advocate and expert N Karthikeyan said gaming comes under the state subject so the state can pass a law to either restrict or allow a particular game but since the issue is in cyberspace a ban may not be realistic.
“Even if they pass a state law, the gaming and gambling applications will still be available in the App […]
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