Online Gaming : Supreme Court Issues Notice On Plea Challenging Madras HC Judgment Striking Down Ban On Online Rummy, Poker Etc

The petition filed by the State of Tamil Nadu assails the judgment passed by the High Court of Madras on 3rd August of 2021 by which the High Court had struck down the Tamil Nadu Gaming and Police Laws (Amendment) Act of 2021. The Act had imposed a ban on games like rummy and poker played on the internet with real stakes

The High Court had observed that betting in its original sense cannot be differentiated from gambling since the element of risk taking is betting. The Court opined that, "Gambling and gaming have developed secondary meanings in judicial parlance. Indeed such words had attained such connotations in the pre constitutional era that nomen juris cannot be shrugged off to understand such words to mean or imply anything other than how they have been judicially interpreted. Irrespective of what meanings are ascribed to these words in dictionaries, gambling is equated with gaming and the activity involves chance to such a predominant extent that the element of skill that may also be involved cannot control the outcome."

The Madras High Court bench led by Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee while striking down the amended Act of 1930 observed that the legislation assailed herein has to be regarded as something done by the legislature capriciously, irrationally and without adequate determining principle such that it is excessive and disproportionate, as when a game of skill involves betting and wagering as given under Section 3(b) of the Act it becomes an offence.

The Court observed that, "Despite no offence under Section 4(1) of the Act of 1930 being made out for playing or participating in a game of skill, if any betting and wagering – within the meaning of such expression as indicated in the Explanation to Section 3(b) of the Act – is involved in a game of skill, by virtue of Sections 8 and 9 of the Act an offence is made out of the same activity. As a result, a simple game of football or volleyball played for bragging rights between two teams or a tournament which awards any cash prize or even a trophy, would, by the legal fiction created by the definition, amount to gaming and thereby outlawed."

THE STATE OF TAMIL NADU AND ORS. Versus JUNGLEE GAMES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED AND ANR. SLP(C) No. 19981-19988/2021