Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh: Following the earlier instructions of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, its reply was presented on behalf of the state government. In which, it was informed that the committee of senior secretaries of the state is considering making a law to curb online gambling.
It will take three months to prepare the draft of the law. After this, it will be sent to the assembly for approval. Taking the said reply on record, the single bench of Justice Vivek Aggarwal gave time to the state government. The next hearing of the matter will be on March 13, 2023.
During the last hearing, the court had asked the state government to take necessary steps to curb online gambling. The court had said that online gambling is affecting the economic, mental and physical health of the country’s youth to a large extent. No more time can be wasted to take a concrete decision in this matter.
The court had taken cognizance of this issue during the hearing on the bail application of Singrauli resident Sanat Kumar Jaiswal. According to advocate Rajendra Prasad Gupta, there is an allegation on Sanat that he had withdrawn eight lakh 51 thousand rupees from his maternal grandfather’s account. He wasted this amount by betting on IPL.
On behalf of the Central Government, Assistant Solicitor General Pushpendra Yadav told the court that gambling and betting is a subject of the state list. On behalf of the state government, advocate Shiv Kumar Srivastava said that the committee of senior secretaries of the state is considering the matter. Therefore, soon a draft will be prepared to make a law on this. The High Court took all the information on record.