A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Delhi High Court urging the IT Ministry and the RBI “to bring illegal and illicit online gambling/betting/wagering/gaming to an end” by Avinash Mehrotra, a social activist and chartered accountant, according to a report by Glaws. The petitioner, according to the report, calls online gambling a “rising menace that has ruined the lives and financial security of several persons”, and goes on to add that a lot of these online gambling websites motivate people to “part with their hard earned money on games of chance such as poker, teenpatti, sports betting, and election betting”. Glaws reported that Mehrotra has exclusively named a number of online gambling websites like Betway, BetRally India, 1xBet, Royal Panda, Dafabet and domestic poker websites such as Adda52, PokerStars.in and Khelo365. “These websites seem to encourage the horrible habit of gambling amongst youngsters, and are doing so solely with a view of making large amounts of profits at the cost of these unsuspecting citizens of our great nation,” the report quotes from Mehrotra’s petition. Bills that support, oppose, and call for legalisation of online gambling in India The report states that the petition is aimed directly at the Nagaland Prohibition of Gambling and Promotion and Regulation of Online Games of Skill Act which was introduced in 2015 and signed into law by the governor a year later. This bill gives authority to the state government to allow for “Games of skill” to be allowed and regulated on an online…
