Petitions against online rummy ban act posted to August 7

CHENNAI: The Chief Justice of the Madras High Court has posted the case, filed by the online gaming companies challenging the law enacted by the State government to ban online rummy games, to August 7, 2023.

A batch of petitions was filed by the gaming companies listed before the first bench of the MHC comprising Chief Justice S V Gangapurwala and Justice P D Audikesavalu. The gaming companies had already submitted their arguments, the Advocate General R Shunmagasundaram appeared for the State requested to post the matter for another day to accommodate senior counsel Kapil Sibal who was engaged in this case.

Last year, the Tamil Nadu government enacted a law in the State Assembly to ban online rummy and poker games. In the wake of receiving complaints about that due to online game addiction, some families lost their loved ones' life. The Tamil Nadu government constituted a commission headed by retired Justice Chandru and the commission report also recommended to ban the online games.

Challenging this law, the online gaming companies filed a batch of petitions to revoke the ban. The counsels appeared for the online gaming companies argued that there is no empirical data about the addiction to online rummy the gaming companies set up a self-regulatory system to avoid addiction to the game.

However, the bench posted the matter to August 7, 2023, for further hearing.