Achi news desk-
States have begun formulating their own legislation to curb real money online gambling to fill the vacuum created by the absence of a self-regulatory body.
States have started formulating their own legislation to curb online real money gaming to fill the vacuum created in the absence of a self-regulatory body and mechanism to deal with online gaming, which was brought up by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in April 2023. The states that have started this exercise include Tamil Nadu and Karnataka .
Incidentally, in April TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) opened the consultations for the formulation of the National Broadcasting Policy for 2024. To pave the way for this, MeitY announced revised IT rules in April 2023. The aim is to regulate the ballooning online gaming. The industry and established three self-regulatory organizations (SROs), but it shot down three proposals submitted in the coming months.
“The SROS were supposed to decide which games are allowed and which are not. The aim of the IT ministry was also for these SROs to become a guiding beacon for various state governments, so they did not ban permitted games. But now there is a vacuum and states are moving on their own,” he said. An industry executive for a newspaper.
In November last year, after the SRO scheme was scrapped, the Center set up a group of ministers to look into regulatory issues surrounding online gaming. Interior Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman were also on this committee.
In 2022, the Tamil Nadu government introduced legislation to regulate online gaming and gambling. Under the auspices of this law, the state also established a regulatory authority. This law is designed to ban online real money games. However, in November 2023, the Madras High Court ruled that the bans could not apply to games like rummy and poker, prompting the state government to work on an amended law to curb these online games.
Earlier in May 2024, the Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority issued strict warnings against those promoting online gaming platforms in the state. Similarly, the Karnataka government is working on legislation to curb online real money gambling and gaming. State Home Minister G Parameshwara had said in February that while Karnataka would work on such a regulation, an umbrella central policy was needed for the ban on online gaming to be effective.
“Initially, the signal from MeitY was that once SROs start approving games as permitted, companies can use that to create awareness among state governments that take an opposing position… that the game was cleared by a self-regulatory mechanism that the Center was notified. But the system was never activated.” , another executive at the gaming company told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.
A senior IT ministry official said the proposal to set up SROs was rejected because they included a high level of industry representation and the government was not comfortable with such a high level of industry representation, which implied a high level of influence.
The consultation paper that TRAI released to the public reads, “Several concerns have also been raised about the increased use of online gaming such as the lack of clear definitions between skill-based games and gambling introduces regulatory ambiguity that raises ethical debates and diverse interpretations about the nature of these gaming activities.”
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMI) responded by saying that “to implement the revised IT rules to effectively control, manage and regulate the online gaming industry in India… In case there are general concerns regarding the regulatory structure, it would be advisable to immediately come up with necessary amendments to resolve them and prevent any regulatory ambiguity.” The IMAI included members like Dreamil and Games 24×7. India Tech, which is also an industry lobby group, wrote to TRAI saying that for the sake of regulatory clarity, online gaming regulation should be handled by Mighty “to ensure consistency and avoid possible confusion”.
Posted: May 6, 2024, 12:37 IST
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