The Madras High Court refused skill-based online gaming companies' request to stay Tamil Nadu's recent law banning online gambling and games of chance yesterday, reported The Hindu. The petition filed by the All India Gaming Federation, Gameskraft, Games 24x7, and Head Digital Works, also seeks that the law be declared unconstitutional. While hearing the case yesterday, Acting Chief Justice T. Raja and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarty said that the state government must first be ordered notice and given time to file a counter-affidavit, granting it six weeks to do so. Why it matters: The law, which came into force on April 21st, bans online gambling and games of chance in the state. Tamil Nadu can do this because it has constitutional powers to regulate gambling. The issue arises in terms of how the law defines gambling—it includes games of skill, like rummy and poker. Various courts have held that such games are legal and lie outside state government jurisdictions. That's why the skill-based gaming companies argue that Tamil Nadu lacks the legislative competence to frame the law this way. Rummy has been held to be a game of skill: Appearing for Bengaluru's Gameskraft yesterday, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi argued that the Supreme Court and High Courts had differentiated between games of chance and skill. They had further held that rummy was a game of skill. States can legislate on social evils if they have the powers to do so: Games of skill are to be regulated by the Indian government and not the…
