Tamil Nadu passes Assembly Bill to ban online gambling

 The Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a Bill to ban online gambling and regulate online gaming on Wednesday, October 19. The Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Bill, 2022, was tabled by Law Minister S Regupathy. On October 7, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi gave his assent to an ordinance to prohibit online gambling and regulate online games in Tamil Nadu.

 The decision to ban online gambling was taken as Tamil Nadu reported a series of suicides of people who were involved in online gambling and lost a huge sum of money in many online gambling platforms. Earlier, the state government had passed a resolution to ban online gambling. The government decided to table the bill to ban online gambling based on the report submitted by the panel chaired by retired High Court Justice K Chandru. The Committee submitted a 71-page report to Chief Minister MK Stalin on June 27, 2022, and subsequently, the state cabinet decided to approve an ordinance on the same on September 26. The Justice K Chandru report strongly advised the government to enact fresh legislation on online games.

It may be noted that more than 22 people lost their lives in the state after losing huge sums of money in online gambling. In the latest such incident, a woman named Bhavani from Chennai died by suicide after she lost around 20 sovereigns of jewellery and Rs 3 lakh in online gambling. Several political parties in the state too had urged Stalin to look into the issue as online gambling impacted mental health and left many families in financial distress.

On October 18, the government tabled reports and passed resolutions, including a resolution against Hindi imposition. Reports of the Arumughaswamy Commission on Jayalalithaa's death and Aruna Jagadeesan's report on the Thoothukudi firing were also tabled on October 18.

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