Gambling, an activity that can hook the most disciplinedamong us has been making its transition from a physical game to being an onlineapp.
It appears that law-makers have never had clarity handlingthis topic in India. Gambling is a state subject, and thus each state decideswhat it wants to do about the gambling business in their state.
Not surprisingly, some states have a blanket ban on anythingcoming under gambling. A few have well-defined laws and classifications. Andthen there are the rest of the states with room for confusion.
All these were for the traditional forms of gambling, andnow online gaming and as a section of it online gambling are becoming aninevitable reality of the world.
"The expression 'gaming' in the two Acts has to beinterpreted in the light of the law laid-down by this Court in the two1957cases, wherein it has been authoritatively held that a competition whichsubstantially depends on skill is not gambling. Gaming is the act or practiceof gambling on a game of chance. It is staking on chance where chance is thecontrolling factor. 'Gaming' in the two Acts would, therefore, mean wagering orbetting on games of chance. It would not include games of skill like horseracing", The Supreme Court of India
The basis for classifying an activity as gambling is theparticipant’s reliability of prediction of outcome – is the result random orcan skill have any effect.
As an illustration, the result of game chess is not randomand the calculated moves of the players decide what happens. To provide acounter example, rolling a fair dice has no possibility for the player toinfluence the outcome in any way. In other words, the outcome is random andthus any stakes-based participation based on the same is gambling.
In India, Dream11 is a game where a participant creates ateam of real-life cricketers and sees the team’s performance in the nextupcoming real-life cricket match. Thus, a certain confusion exists as to thisis a game of chance or a game of skill. Also, online versions of traditionalgames like Indian Rummy are also available.
All in all, online gambling is an upcoming industry that hasthe potential of contributing massive amounts of tax collection if it were madelegal and taxed in a reasonable manner.