Indian tech startups and industry associations have expressed concerns and looked for clearness over the Karnataka government’s bill to boycott online gambling.

Rameesh Kailasam, CEO of IndiaTech.org, an industry body that represents founders of Indian startups and investors, revealed to Moneycontrol that they have prescribed to the Government of Karnataka to promptly give essential public statements to eliminate confusion in the startup environment of which Karnataka is a significant center point.

They have likewise looked for explanations around specific sections of the bill expressing that they risk being wrongly interpreted to apply to all legitimate online gaming organizations, he said.

Indiatech.org, which counts Ola, MakeMyTrip, and Steadview Capital as founding members, has likewise suggested that the government should give important principles that would unmistakably divide and exclude games of skill from the amendments introduced to the Karnataka Police (Amendment) Bill, 2021. There are various high court judgments and a Supreme Court judgment that can assist with expressing governments in arriving at clarity while giving the principles, he said.

The association has additionally submitted fundamental core values that would empower the government to clearly recognize by characterizing “Online Skill-Based Games and Sports” that have a predominance of skill over chance and are unmistakably not gambling and betting, he said.

Karnataka’s legislative assembly passed a bill to amend the Karnataka Police (Amendment) Act, 2021 yesterday, in the wake of tabling it in the assembly on September 17. It looks to prohibit all types of online gaming where the transfer of money is involved.

The amendment comes against the backdrop of public interest litigation filed in the Karnataka High Court to disallow online gambling. Nonetheless, it eliminated the qualification between the game of skill and game of chance, in this way bringing skill-based gaming startups under its domain. The bill proposes a prison term of as long as three years and a penalty of up to Rs 1 lakh for offenders.

“The proposed law doesn’t disallow online games that strictly agree with games of skill highlights. The government, in any case, will manage operators and abettors who run games of chance covered as games of skill. Skill games that imply dangers of the player losing money would likewise welcome activity” Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai revealed to The Times of India.

Former Karnataka IT minister and Congress MLA Priyank Kharge anyway said that the government should be more explicit and recognize games that empower betting rather than a sweeping boycott for every online game. “Govt should form a committee with industry stakeholders and come out with a law that controls online betting rather than a bill that will not stand the trial of law,” he said on Twitter.

Ranjana Adhikari, Partner – Media, Entertainment and Gaming, TMT Practice group of IndusLaw, said the approach of forcing a restriction on the real money skill gaming industry is unbalanced to the hazard that the state alleges and tragically the state decided to embrace a backward advance towards the skill gaming industry.

In August, the Madras High Court had struck down a similar statute by Tamil Nadu that had prohibited online gambling in November last year. Last week, Telangana Principal Secretary for IT, electronics, and communications Jayesh Ranjan had additionally said that sweeping forbidding isn’t an answer and one necessity to have a qualification between games of skill and games of chance.

“The sector has been a solid monetary supporter of the Indian economy in any event, during the time of lockdown, and is additionally expected to generate incomes in the abundance of $3 billion by 2025. The move by the Karnataka government is a misfortune to the state’s standing of being a tech-center and startup capital” said Roland Landers, CEO, All India Gaming Federation.

Credits: MoneyControl