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Supreme Court takes over PILs against opinion trading platforms
A slew of PILs have been filed at the Bombay, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh high courts, arguing that opinion trading platforms are similar to betting and gambling.
The batch of SLPs stem from three separate high court decisions — two from the Madras High Court and one from the Karnataka High Court — which uniformly ruled that online skill games, including rummy and poker, fall outside the purview of “betting and gambling” as defined under Entry 34 of List II in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court has transferred to itself a clutch of Public Interest Litigations (PILs) pending in various High Courts, challenging opinion trading platforms. With this, all related matters will come under the apex court's direct consideration.
A slew of PILs have been filed at the Bombay, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh high courts, arguing that opinion trading platforms are similar to betting and gambling.
Last week, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted a search operation at four premises of Probo, which is an opinion trading platform. The anti-money laundering agency cracked down on the company and its promoters, Sachin Subhaschandra Gupta and Ashish Garg in connection with the company's illegal gambling/betting activities across the country.
Probo had urged the Supreme Court to consolidate all the cases before the Bombay High Court in May this year.
Henceforth, the SC said it would prefer to hear all the petitioners directly and added that matters should be heard centrally to avoid conflicting arguments.
This year, Probo and another opinion trading platform SportsBaazi, shut their operation in Haryana after the state government introduced the Prevention of Public Gambling Act, 2025. The new Act aims to regulate the business of the online gaming industry. It primarily curbs gambling or betting on sports, including match or spot fixing.
Central government has also taken multiple steps to regulate the online gaming industry in the interest of users' safety. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has issued 1410 blocking directions related to online betting/gambling/gaming websites (including mobile applications) between 2022 and February, 2025.
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