Law minister S Regupathy participated and distributed notebooks to children during Tamil Nadu (TN) Sports Development Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s 45th birthday. Later Regupathy spoke to the media about the draft rules on online gaming.
Raghupathi said, “It is the intention of the TN government that there should be no law to protect those who run online gambling or any law to collect tax from them. Online rummy should be banned completely. We will emphasize the same. After reading the report issued by the central government on online rummy, a complete comment will be given.”
“The law brought by the TN government is common to all. All are acceptable. It will be welcome if the Union Government brings its legislation based on it. Instead, if it is an indirect act to protect the online gambling operators, it will certainly be reprehensible,” he added.
The draft rules were released on Monday, 2 January, by the Ministry for Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). Several rules were proposed for amendment under Information Technology Rules 2021.
All online gaming intermediaries are required to observe the due diligence under the rules while performing their operations which include proper registration of individuals using KYC, Informing users about policies related to withdrawal or refund of deposits, along with giving the details of their certification acquired from a reputed certifying body.
The announcement for draft rules came from Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar after MEITY was named as Nodal Ministry for Matters relating to online gaming by the Indian government, which recognized esports as a multi-sport even under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
Online gaming in TN has recently sparked a huge clash. After Governor RN Ravi delayed his assent to the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Bill after the ordinance expired on 28 November.
Many skill-based games like online rummy and poker were banned and labeled as games of chance by the state government under the ordinance despite the games ruled as games of skill by the Supreme Court under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.