Madras HC rejects plea seeking ban on online games

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Thursday said that elected governments were the appropriate authority to take a policy decision over concerns raised in a public interest litigation (PIL) on the addiction of children and young adults to online games and declined to entertain the plea

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Thursday said that elected governments were the appropriate authority to take a policy decision over concerns raised in a public interest litigation (PIL) on the addiction of children and young adults to online games and declined to entertain the plea.

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A bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, however, gave liberty to the petitioner, E Martin Jayakumar, to approach the union government and the state government on the issue within four weeks. The authorities have been asked to indicate the relevant government’s stance on the issue within eight weeks of receipt of the petitioner’s representation.

The bench stated that courts would intervene if there is some illegal action or if something is detrimental to the larger public interest but given the present situation of the matter they didn’t want to issue a diktat but that they would leave it to the wisdom of the people’s elected representatives.

“...even constitutional courts should be slow in entering into such areas and dealing with such matters on the personal sense of morality of the individual complainant or of the Judge or Judges concerned,” the court said in its orders. “It is only upon the failure of the executive to act and, thereupon, the Court perceiving the matter to be a danger to society, that the Court ought to step in. At least at the initial stage, the duty of the Court is to direct the complainants to the executive for a more wholesome and studied policy decision to be taken by the executive than what may be possible before any Court.”

The PIL had sought a ban on all the online and offline video games and to bring appropriate mechanism to track computers, laptops, mobile phones and other devices used for playing games. The petitioner further stated that children are being lured by unscrupulous business enterprises particularly during the lockdown since educational institutions are closed. He perceived the addiction to be devastating and life-threatening in the sense that it destroys the career-building phase of a young adult and may even lead to suicidal tendencies and extreme anger against parents and elders seeking to check the habit.

The court noted the submissions and clarified that this order would not prevent any similar complaints in the future if executive action isn’t forthcoming. “There is no doubt that children and young adults these days are addicted to their phones and their worlds appear to revolve around their mobile phones,” the court said. “Oftentimes, a family could be together and sitting at a table but each member using the phone, even if to describe the dish that he may be having or the quality of food at the moment.”