In this exclusive interview, Sports Lawyer and Principal Associate of Indian law firm Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan (Delhi office) Vidushpat Singhania discusses sports and gaming law practice in India, regulating spot-fixing and cheating in sport, liberalising laws on sports-betting , the upcoming FICCI conference on regulation of sports-betting and other important issues concerning the gaming industry.
Q. Could you tell us more about your practice on Sports & Gaming Laws?
In rapid developments over the past couple of days, media reports have indicated that the Sports Ministry is considering introducing a Bill to legalise sports-betting in India. It is believed that the FICCI conference conducted last year urging the government to legalise and regulate sports-betting and calls by various sports administrators, independent analysts and policy-experts along with the recent spot-fixing and betting scandal have finally prompted the government to consider legalising betting.
This post will describe the legal and regulatory environment in South Asian nations as not much is known about the gaming laws regulating wagering activities in countries neighbouring India. An original version of this article was first published on the website Bookmakersreview and is re-posted with prior consent.
India: This website has dealt with most questions concerning gambling laws comprehensively and an introduction on gambling laws can be accessed here. However, the regulatory, political and legal environment governing gambling laws is reiterated here for the benefit of readers.
In an explosive betting and spot-fixing scandal in the sixth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) exposed by the Delhi police, several bookies with links to the underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and other foreign criminals as well as top cricketers of Rajasthan Royals franchise S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan are set to be arrested by the Delhi police for spot-fixing, cheating and accepting payments in black money.
The multi-thousand crore chit fund scam in West Bengal involving the Saradha group of companies and top state politicians, businessmen etc. predictably triggered a strong response from the judiciary and masses. The West Bengal government and top leaders were accused of complicity in the scam which looted thousands of innocent citizens of hard-earned savings. After the scam, the West Bengal government has attempted to regulate fraudulent investment companies by way of special laws. Though the subject of regulating chit fund companies does not really fall within the ambit of gaming or lottery laws; there is a slight intersection of both these fields as drawing of lots for declaring the winner of the pool of amount is also an element involved in lotteries.
Though Indian society has always seen gambling as an immoral activity and vice that deserves to be prohibited, ever since the advent of the British in India who viewed horse racing as a sport and past-time, betting on horses has been an exception to the criminal sanctions imposed on gambling and wagering activities. Lotteries and betting on horses with a licensed bookmaker in a race-course are ordinarily exceptions to the comprehensive ban on gambling (except the two states of Goa & Sikkim and Union territory of Daman which have amended their gaming Acts to allow casinos). In this post, I shall analyse the provisions relating to race courses and exceptions in statute allowing betting there. [For an introduction on the gambling laws in India see this post.]
In this post we present an interview with British gaming lawyer and partner of International law firm Squire Sanders, Mr. Carl Rohsler. Mr. Rohsler is a leading authority on gambling laws in the United Kingdom and has written several books and articles on the subject. He is also interested in India’s gaming laws and the need for regulating gambling in India. He has been a keynote speaker at last years conference on legalising sports-betting in India organised by FICCI and has actively written on the need for regulating India’s gaming laws. In this interview, Mr. Rohsler answers questions on the gambling regulations in UK, model for reforming gaming laws, skill v. chance debate and a number of other issues.
In this post, we are pleased to present an interview with Mr. Anthony Cabot, Partner of Nevada firm Lewis and Roca, former President and founding member of top gaming organisation International Masters of Gaming Law (IMGL) and eminent gaming law scholar who has written several books and articles on the subject. In this interview, Mr. Cabot discusses opportunities in gaming law, regulatory framework for gambling and casinos in USA and his thoughts on the future of the global gaming industry.
Exclusive Digging through the archives in the Maharashtra Law & Judiciary Department it has been found out that the state legislative assembly of Maharashtra passed a historic and visionary piece of legislation in 1976; during the height of national emergency. The Maharashtra legislative assembly had passed The Maharashtra Casinos (Control & Tax) Act, 1976 receiving the assent of the Governor on 19th July of that year as per a gazetted copy available through the government.
Virtual Peer-to-Peer currency Bitcoin generated a great deal of media attention this week as the value of the virtual currency increased exponentially after the Cyprus bailout and Eurozone crisis (the total value of Bitcoins in circulation was approximately US $ 2.6 Billion as on last week), where investors supposedly pulled their money out of conventional banks and invested it in Bitcoins.[See reports of Economist, Forbes, Time and Times of India].
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Recent Posts
- Feature: Sports lawyer Vidushpat Singhania discusses the recent spot-fixing controversy, sports betting laws and upcoming FICCI conference on sports betting
- Govt planning to introduce match-fixing, betting Bills; PIL filed against fixing in IPL
- Legal & regulatory severely restricts gambling activities in South Asia- studying the regulatory model of South Asian nations
- IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal breaks out once again; Sreesanth, other cricketers and bookies charged for cheating
- Saradha chit fund scam: Can lottery laws apply to chit funds such as Saradha?
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