CHENNAI: The Chief Justice of the Madras High Court has allowed the playing of online rummy and poker, termed it as the game of skills, and partly upheld the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Act, 2020.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala and Justice P D Audikesavalu pronounced final orders in a batch of cases filed by online gaming companies challenging the government order passed to ban online gambling including rummy.
The bench exempted rummy and poker, as being the game of skills and upheld other portions of the act banning game of chances.
Last year the Tamil Nadu government enacted a law in the State Assembly to ban online rummy and poker games. In the wake of receiving complaints about due to online game addiction, some families lost their loved ones' lives.
The Tamil Nadu government constituted a commission headed by retired Justice Chandru and the commission report also recommended banning online games.
Challenging this law, the online gaming companies filed a batch of petitions to revoke the ban.
A battery of senior counsels including Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Aryama Sundaram, and Sathish Parasaran appeared for the online gaming companies argued that there is no empirical data about the addiction to online rummy the gaming companies set up a self-regulatory system to avoid addiction to game.
The online companies contended that the State government doesn't have the legislative competency to enact a law to prohibit online rummy.
Further, they contended that there is no empirical data about the addiction to online rummy the gaming companies set up a self-regulatory system to avoid addiction to the game.
The online gaming companies also cited the Supreme Court order saying that online rummy is a game of skill, not a game of chance.
However the counsel for the State contended that banning online games is a policy decision of the Tamil Nadu government as it disturbs the public order and leads to various suicides, the online games were banned in the State.