Madras HC to hear petition of online gaming companies against ban order on April 27

Chennai, April 26 (IANS) A division bench of the Madras High Court has agreed to hear a bunch of petitions filed by online gaming companies against the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Act 2022 on April 27.

The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly twice passed the Bill to prohibit online gaming. After it was passed a second time, Governor R.N. Ravi gave his assent.

The division bench of the Madras High Court comprising Justices S. Vaidyanathan and R. Kalavathi agreed to hear the petitions after senior Supreme Court lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi requested the bench to hear the case as the court would go on summer vacation from May 1 onwards.

The bench informed Singhvi that the writ petitions would be listed before the first division bench of Acting Chief Justice T. Raja and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy on Thursday if the papers were in order and the case gets numbered by the registry on Wednesday itself.

Singhvi, had made the petition before the second division bench as the Acting Chief Justice was in Madurai on Wednesday.

It may be noted that a similar law passed during the tenure of previous AIADMK government was shot down by the Madras High Court in 2021 on the grounds that there could not be blanket ban on games of skill.

The first bench of then Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy had while giving the orders stated that legislation imposing a wide-ranging ban must be regarded as excessive and disproportionate to the object sought to be achieved.

The bench has, however, in the order said that the state legislature was free to enact a new legislation for regulating online games. Thereafter the Legislative Assembly passed the Bill in October 2022 for a new law.

The Bill received the assent of the Governor in April 2023 after the Assembly readopted the Bill which was rejected by the Governor in March 2023.