Gambling, an activity that can hook the most disciplined among us has been making its transition from a physical game to being an online app.
It appears that law-makers have never had clarity handling this topic in India. Gambling is a state subject, and thus each state decides what it wants to do about the gambling business in their state.
Not surprisingly, some states have a blanket ban on anything coming under gambling. A few have well-defined laws and classifications. And then there are the rest of the states with room for confusion.
All these were for the traditional forms of gambling, and now online gaming and as a section of it online gambling are becoming an inevitable reality of the world.
"The expression 'gaming' in the two Acts has to be interpreted in the light of the law laid-down by this Court in the two1957 cases, wherein it has been authoritatively held that a competition which substantially depends on skill is not gambling. Gaming is the act or practice of gambling on a game of chance. It is staking on chance where chance is the controlling factor. 'Gaming' in the two Acts would, therefore, mean wagering or betting on games of chance. It would not include games of skill like horse racing", The Supreme Court of India
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The basis for classifying an activity as gambling is the participant’s reliability of prediction of outcome – is the result random or can skill have any effect.
As an illustration, the result of game chess is not random and the calculated moves of the players decide what happens. To provide a counter example, rolling a fair dice has no possibility for the player to influence the outcome in any way. In other words, the outcome is random and thus any stakes-based participation based on the same is gambling.
In India, Dream11 is a game where a participant creates a team of real-life cricketers and sees the team’s performance in the next upcoming real-life cricket match. Thus, a certain confusion exists as to this is a game of chance or a game of skill. Also, online versions of traditional games like Indian Rummy are also available.
All in all, online gambling is an upcoming industry that has the potential of contributing massive amounts of tax collection if it were made legal and taxed in a reasonable manner.