HC quashes Tamil Nadu’s ban on online betting games (original) (raw)

CHENNAI: The erstwhile AIADMK government’s blanket ban on online

betting

games was quashed on Tuesday “in its entirety” by the Madras high court as it was irrational and excessive.
The first bench of Chief Justice

Sanjib Banerjee

and Justice

Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy

said: “The legislation challenged herein has to be regarded as something done by the legislature capriciously, irrationally and without adequate determining principles such that it is excessive and disproportionate…"
However, the court made it clear that nothing would prevent appropriate legislation, conforming to the constitutional sense of propriety, being brought in the field of betting and gambling by the state.

The court declared the Tamil Nadu Gaming and Police Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, which amends the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act, 1930, as ultra vires the

Constitution

.

The order came on a batch of pleas moved by online gaming companies challenging the validity of the legislation. Opposing the challenge, the Tamil Nadu government contended that young teenagers and adults in the age group of 25-30 were losing their entire earnings and savings playing such online betting games. Rummy might be a game of skill, but when it is played for stakes it becomes gambling, the state said.
Disagreeing with the state, the bench said that by bringing in an ordinance in November 2020, which was later adopted as an amending act, the legislature erred in expanding its field of legislation by widening the scope of gambling and ascribing a connotation to betting that the relevant entry in the State List does not envisage.

“It is true that the entry ‘Betting and Gambling’ appears, at first blush, to cover the possible distinct fields of betting and gambling; but the law as declared defines gambling as a game of chance which skill cannot control; and, the authority conferred on a state legislature by the relevant entry appears to be confined to the arena of betting in games of chance," the bench said. It added that viewed in such a perspective, the legislation does not appear to be genuinely referable to the field of legislation allotted to the state under Entry-34 of the State List in the Constitution.
At the same time, the amending act and the law laid down on the subject in a plethora of judgments are so inconsistent and irreconcilable that both cannot stand together. Even the Law Commission’s recommendations stressed on regulation, and not prohibition, the judges said.