Off late, due to the rise in online betting and fantasy sports, there has been continued curiosity and discussion whether casinos and gambling are legal in various Indian cities and states?
In this article, I am going to discuss the same in regards to the city beautiful, Chandigarh.
According to the Indian constitution, gambling is considered as a state subject and the states have the power to formulate laws regarding legality and illegality of gambling. However, being a union territory, Chandigarh comes under the central law. Public gambling act of 1867, which was enacted by the central government, declared gambling as a punishable offense and even drafted punishment for the act of indulging in gambling activities or even visiting a place that has gambling.
Though a fraction of social workers and activists feel that betting and gambling leads to increased crime, money laundering, another faction of the society and government claims that such activities bring a lot of revenue to the state and hence, should be looked upon seriously.
The governments have, however, not announced any guidelines when it comes to online casino, gambling or betting. When the Indian government passed the IT act in 2000 to regulate online activities, it did not mention casino, gambling or betting and hence, off late, the online trend in India has been picking up.
In Chandigarh too, due to ever-increasing population of students and young professionals, the trend of online casinos betting has been picking up, especially during times of tournaments like IPL and cricket world cup. Online casinos have a relatively lesser reach and awareness among the general public, however, with the emergence of platforms like leovegas livecasino, it’s just about time that millennials get familiar with new trends too.
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