Govt issues advisory against real-money gaming ads
Mint reported concerns on behalf of the I&B Ministry in this regard. “With the World Cup and Asia Cup around the corner, there will be more of an emphasis on this.
We are very concerned about online betting platforms that are leading to financial frauds and major irregularities," Vikram Sahay, joint secretary of the I&B Ministry, told Mint at the sidelines of a gaming event in Delhi. The ministry, in this regard, had also issued similar advisories in June and October last year, as well as March this year.
Industry stakeholders said that while the Centre’s stance on the real-money gaming sector has not been ambiguous, a key concern lies in the implementation and enforcement of self-regulatory bodies (SRBs) in the online gaming sector—mandated under Rule 3(1)(b) of the 2 January amendment of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Jay Sayta, a technology and gaming lawyer, said, "The issue is that SRBs for permissible online games have not been operationalized under the IT Rules, but the advisory mentions intermediaries requiring to carry only advertisements of ‘permissible’ online RMGs.
If many advertisers and intermediaries have not been following advisories in the past one year, why isn't penal action being initiated, and why is the government issuing warnings through advisories while not initiating any concrete criminal action against advertisers for flagrant violations?" A senior policy advisor to multiple online gaming firms in the country, who requested anonymity, said that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has not offered clarifications on a timeline for when the appointment of SRBs be cleared. “There have been multiple rounds of
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