Madras High Court had already upheld T.N. govt’s right to fix time, age and monetary limit for online games: Home Secretary

Tamil Nadu government upholds right to regulate online games, imposing restrictions on minors, time limits, and monetary caps.

The Madras High Court has already upheld the State government’s right to fix time, age and monetary limit for playing online real money games (RMG). Therefore, such a right could not be put to challenge for the second time before the same court, the Tamil Nadu government argued on Friday.

In a counter affidavit filed before a Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar, Home Secretary Dheeraj Kumar said that the State’s right to regulate the online games was upheld on November 9, 2023 by the first Division Bench comprising the then Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu.

He said that the first Bench had refused to strike down the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Act, 2022, in its entirety, but ruled that the prohibition would apply only to games of chance and not games of skill such as rummy and poker. A challenge against the ruling was still pending before the Supreme Court.

However, in the 2023 judgement, the first Bench said: “The State has to take care of the public health of its citizens...The State certainly has the power to regulate online games of skill. It can control and regulate the games of skill. The State can provide for a time limit — that the game may not be played after a particular time.” Therefore, the present batch of writ petitions filed by a group of online gaming companies, challenging the restrictions imposed by the Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority (TNOGA), must be dismissed with exemplary costs, the counter affidavit, relied upon by Advocate General P.S. Raman, assisted by TNOGA counsel B. Arvind Srevatsa, read.

The Home Secretary further told the court that the TNOGA regulations were framed only after holding discussions with all stakeholders, including online gaming companies, and therefore, they could not be challenged on the ground of failure to obtain stakeholders’ opinion.

He said that the regulations prohibited all minors under the age of 18 from playing online RMG, make Know Your Customer (KYC) verification mandatory for creation of an account to play online games and insist on KYC verification for the initial login with Aadhaar to be authenticated by a second layer verification of One Time Password (OTP) sent to the phone number linked with the Aadhaar. Further, TNOGA had made it mandatory for online gaming companies to display pop-up caution messages when a player plays continuously for more than an hour.

Such messages should appear at an interval of every 30 minutes, indicating how long they had been playing. It had also been made mandatory to display a caution message with the wordings ‘Online Gaming is Addictive in Nature’ continuously on the login page of the RMG sites/apps. All online game providers were also instructed to fix daily, weekly and monthly monetary limit for each player, and display pop-up messages indicating the monetary limit and the amount that had been spent so far whenever a player deposits money.