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One of India’s largest three states by population, Maharashtra, is preparing to license online skill gaming with stakes, complementing a reform drive by information technology (IT) hub Karnataka state announced last week.
Citing unnamed senior government sources, Indian media outlet Storyboard18 on Friday (April 11) confirmed that Maharashtra’s IT, revenue and home affairs ministries are consulting with gaming “industry stakeholders” to craft online gaming policy.
“A licensing fee structure is on the table, and a crackdown on illegal offshore betting companies is imminent,” Storyboard18 quoted one of the sources as saying. “We are designing the policy to be forward-thinking and enforceable.”
The government intends to legally and economically “legitimise” the online skill gaming segment while shielding users from harm through much tougher legislation, the sources said.
The sources’ comments flesh out a statement two weeks ago by Maharashtra’s home affairs minister Yogesh Kadam, who said the government is formulating a “uniform policy and stricter laws” on online gaming and associated cyber-crime.
Kadam was speaking before the upper house of the Legislative Assembly on March 25.
Developments in Maharashtra appear to have unfolded in tandem with a reformist drive in leading IT state Karnataka, whose home minister and IT minister last week flagged a licensing regime for online skill games with stakes amid a similar ramp in punitive actions against chance-based gambling and illegal operators.
However, a connecting element between the two states’ reform push is stakeholder consultation, indicating that the governments are placing greater currency in a workable legislative and regulatory environment.
The Karnataka IT minister, Priyank Kharge, told reporters last week that the government has been consulting the online gaming industry’s three peak bodies: the All India Gaming Federation; the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports; and the E-Gaming Federation.
It was not immediately clear if the Maharashtra government is consulting the three groups in similar fashion or if other stakeholders are involved.
With a population of well over 120m, Maharashtra is vying with Bitar for the rank of second-most populous state in India.
Along with IT leader and start-up oasis Karnataka, Maharashtra government support for a regulated online gaming industry in a highly populous region, combined with Maharashtra’s own significant IT economy, would prove a boon for the industry’s national prospects.
Maharashtra has been mulling codification of online skill gaming with stakes for at least five years, starting with a feasibility study launched in 2020 amid the state’s horrendous coronavirus pandemic emergency that killed nearly 150,000 people and laid waste to the state budget.
Two years later, Maharashtra began preparing legislation to regulate online gaming, but the draft seemingly never reached the legislature amid national lurches in goods and services tax (GST) policy for gaming and Supreme Court deliberations on the industry’s legality.
