Written by Pathi Venkata Thadhagath
Bengaluru’s Rajajinagar MLA Suresh Kumar has written to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman requesting her to ban advertising, marketing, and texting by online gaming companies. He highlighted that the online gaming platforms had ruined the lives of many people in Bengaluru, in a letter dated December 8.
The Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) MLA wrote, “As a lawmaker representing Rajajinagar assembly constituency in Bengaluru, Karnataka, I am in receipt of verbal complaints from several friends and parents of residents from my own constituency as well as from other parts of Bengaluru that they have been getting both text messages on their mobile phones and unsolicited marketing calls trying to entice/force them to play online rummy by betting their money.”
He also mentioned that companies lure users with a ‘welcome bonus’ of thousands of rupees and make them addicts of these platforms. The senior leader also warned that these gaming platforms are like liquor and cigarettes. “Though the consumption of liquor and cigarettes is allowed under the law, their manufacturers are expressly prohibited from advertising and marketing them, and even our GST regime treats them as demerit goods. The government imposes steep taxation on them to discourage people from consuming them,” he added.
“I am of the strong view that the same regulations should apply to online games involving money. I am aware courts have upheld the legal validity of online games of skill, but there is no bar on the government from prohibiting advertising, marketing and texting by online gaming companies to lure people into playing these games by betting money,” he further wrote in the letter.
(With inputs of ANI)
