Question on govt’s reaction to anti-betting PIL & plan to ban gaming sites reaches Parliament

Exclusive Sudheer Gupta, the BJP MP from Mandsaur (Madhya Pradesh) has raised an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha on whether the central government proposes to ban online betting websites.

The Member of Parliament has also raised a query on the Delhi High Court’s order last month declining interim blocking of online betting and poker websites and the government’s likely response to the notice issued by the High Court, in the PIL filed by social activist Avinash Mehrotra.

Gupta, in his query to Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister of Electronics, Information Technology, Law & Justice, has posed the following questions to the central government:

(a) whether the Government proposes to ban websites that encourage online betting, betting games, etc. and if so, the details thereof;

(b) whether the Delhi High Court has pronounced a judgement in which it refrained from a complete ban on such websites;

(c) if so, the details thereof and the reasons therefor; and

(d) whether the Delhi High Court has issued any notice to the Government in this regard, if so, the details thereof and the reaction of the Government thereto?

A response to Gupta’s query will be tabled in the Lok Sabha by the central government on 3rd July, 2019, as per details uploaded on the Lok Sabha website. Since the query has been marked as an unstarred question, the government is merely required to give a written response or a statement, without being obligated to answer any supplementary or follow-up questions.

The response given by the Minister will be keenly tracked since this will be the central government’s first official reaction to Mehrotra’s anti-betting PIL and will give an indication on whether the central government intends to impose a crackdown on online gaming and betting websites.