Karnataka state government<\/a>\u00a0is considering amending the Karnataka Police Act 1963 to ban all forms of gambling in the state, including online gambling has been heavily criticised by the All-India Gaming Federation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAccording to\u00a0Roland Landers, AIGF CEO<\/strong>, the bill makes no distinction between online gambling and online games of skill. He argues that the latter has been a signal of development for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLanders said:\u00a0\u201cIndia is the fifth-largest online gaming market globally<\/strong>, and skill-based gaming, a dawn sector, is bringing forth an expanding number of unicorns inside the country, particularly in Karnataka. Skill-based gaming couldn\u2019t be compared to gambling and prohibiting it isn\u2019t an answer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\nLanders said the sector had contributed to the Indian economy and is expected to produce revenue of over US$3bn by 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Home minister Araga Jnanendra<\/strong>\u00a0has said that the legal amendment is necessary because it was difficult for the police to handle gambling and betting due to the new request from a bench of\u00a0the state high court at Dharwad, which has stopped the police raiding gambling dens<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAccording to the Indian Express, Araga Jnanendra said: \u201cThere is a lot of gambling happening using electronic devices and this has to be controlled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe bill aims to strengthen provisions of the Karnataka Police Act to make gambling a cognisable and non-bailable offence<\/strong> and include the use of cyberspace including computer resources or any communication device as defined in the Information Technology Act, 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nCongress leader Ramesh Kumar <\/strong>said that gambling activities should not be conducted without the police\u2019s knowledge and efforts should be made to improve the police\u2019s ability to fight crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe revised law provides for three years\u2019 imprisonment instead of one year for gambling<\/strong>, and a fine of up to RS100,000. The law only excludes betting on horse races from the scope of gambling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The All-India Gaming Federation (AIGF) claimed the banning of online gambling would damage the state’s standing as a tech centre and start-up capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":22921,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Karnataka state government's proposed amendment to the Karnataka Police Act 1963, aiming to ban all forms of online gambling, faces strong opposition from the All-India Gaming Federation (AIGF). The AIGF argues this move fails to distinguish between games of skill and chance, potentially damaging India's burgeoning tech and start-up ecosystem, which is projected to generate over US$3bn by 2025. The government cites difficulties in policing online gambling as the primary driver for the stricter legislation.","focusai_entities":"All-India Gaming Federation (AIGF), Roland Landers, Araga Jnanendra, Ramesh Kumar, Karnataka state government, Indian Express","focusai_location":"India, Karnataka, Dharwad","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.95), compliance_legal (0.95), operator_casino (0.9), affiliate_publisher (0.8), product_ux (0.7), tech_data (0.7), marketing_crm (0.85), payments_fraud_aml (0.8), investor_analyst (0.95), supplier_vendor (0.85), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Skill vs. Chance","query":"What specific criteria will the Karnataka government use to legally distinguish between online games of skill and games of chance, and how might this impact existing business models?"},{"label":"Economic Impact Analysis","query":"Has the Karnataka state government conducted a comprehensive economic impact assessment of a potential online gambling ban, considering the AIGF's projected US$3bn revenue contribution by 2025?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,16334],"tags":[23911,4138],"class_list":["post-22914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news","category-south-asia-news","tag-gambling-regulation","tag-online-gambling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22914"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22930,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22914\/revisions\/22930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}