While most states in India have begun to embrace the idea of gambling over the recent past, the country’s state of Gujarat is not willing to jump on the bandwagon. The state is reportedly currently pondering over a potential ban on online gambling within the state. According to a recent report by the Times of India, the government of Gujarat has already initiated preliminary discussions to explore the possibility of having the existing gaming laws amended.
The Motivation Behind It
As it turns out, the idea of amending the state’s gambling laws came at the request of the Ahmedabad Police Department whose officials have recently expressed concerns that the existing gambling laws are not stringent enough to curb some illegal gaming practices in the state.
The state’s police department has tried to curb illegal gambling activities for a very long time with one of the very first steps in this regard being the imposition of bans on a number of online video games across the state. The most notable casualty of this ban was an online multiplayer video game known as Player Unknowns’ Battle Grounds (PUBG) – the game was particularly targeted because the authorities felt that yielded too much aggression especially among the youth.
In addition to that, the Gujarat authorities had already imposed a few laws that prohibited online gambling as well as gaming in some local establishments. Even these turned out to be insufficient and now the state is considering an outright ban online gambling across the entire state.
According to AK Singh, the commissioner of the Ahmedabad Police Department, the home department and officials of the CID crime branch have held already even held a meeting where they were able to discuss changes that could be made to the existing gaming laws. The proposed changes will involve some rather strict policies to ensure that people indulging in the activity illegally are dealt with in accordance with the law. Commission Singh, however, acknowledged the fact that the new laws would certainly be very hard to implement especially considering how widespread online gambling is, not just in India but the rest of the world as well.
“Recently, the CID crime branch and home department officials had held a meeting to bring changes in gambling laws. It is tough as gambling in some part of the world is legal, while in India it is illegal,” the commissioner commented.
Gujarat has long been a strong opposer of the growing online industry with its authorities doing the most to ensure that the industry does not make any progress in the territory.
