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Courts can’t stand in way of new Online Gaming Act: Centre tells Karnataka HC
The ban on real-money online games and their advertisements may be enforced in the near future, despite protests from a section in the online gaming industry.
The Union government on Saturday told the Karnataka high court that courts cannot stand in the way of the new Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, coming into force, stressing that once a law has secured Presidential assent, its notification is a “constitutional function” beyond judicial restraint.
Defending the legislation, Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta told the Karnataka high court that the Act’s passage through Parliament and assent by the President left no scope for its implementation to be halted merely because “one particular individual” was aggrieved.”
When the court asked whether notification of the new Act was imminent, Mehta said it could happen soon.
“I don’t have instructions (from the union government” but it (the Act) might be notified soon,” Mehta told a bench of Justice BM Shyama Prasad of the Karnataka high court.
The SG’s submissions mean that the ban on real-money online games and their advertisements may be enforced in the near future, despite protests from a section in the online gaming industry.
Mehta made his submissions while the Court was hearing a petition filed by Head Digital Works, the parent company of A23, which offers online rummy and poker games, challenging the new Act.
Senior counsels Aryama Sundaram and Dhyan Chinappa, who appeared for the petitioner company, urged the court on Saturday to consider their prayer for granting an interim stay on the operation of the Act. Sundaram also asked the court to direct the union government not to notify the Act until it was examined by the high court.
It is then that Mehta said once the Act had received Presidential assent, its notification and consequent enforcement cannot be prevented.
The high court issued a notice to the union government and directed it to file a reply by September 8, the next date of hearing.
In its petition filed earlier this week, Head Digital has argued that the blanket ban imposed on all online real money games, reverses the government’s earlier policy that permitted skill-based games and treated them differently from games of chance. It claims the Act was enacted without consultation and has led to significant economic disruption.
The please also claims that the new legislation has led to massive economic disruption, risking the livelihood of over two lakh people and wiping out over ₹23,440 crore in investment.
