Central Government of India Says Blocking Online Gaming Sites Not Technically Feasible

The Central government has told the Delhi High Court that blocking of online gaming sites is technologically infeasible as many states have enacted laws which partially or fully allow such activities.

The government was responding to a Delhi High Court order in an ongoing petition to block online gaming sites in India. The Delhi High Court had urged the central government and the Delhi state government to assess the petitioners’ demands to block gaming sites on the basis of skill or chance.

The petitioners Avinash Mehrotra and Deepti Bhagat had claimed that gaming and gambling websites are encouraging people to spend income on games of chance. It claimed no skill was involved in these games and such sites also allowed revenue to leak out of India since many are based outside the country.

In India, games of skill are those where the element of chance cannot be entirely ruled out, but it is the element of skill on the part of the participants that plays a dominant role in determining the outcome of the game.

While casino and sports gambling is banned in many parts of India, Section 12 of the Public Gambling Act exempts games of skill from the penal provisions against gambling. Startups such as Junglee Games, Dream 11, Funnearn, Ace2Three, RummyCircle, Zynga, Innopark India (Classic Rummy), Loco by PocketAces, MPL, Skill4fun and BrainBaazi among others are active in the games of skill segment in India.