Gambling in India is a restricted activity. At present, the land-based gambling operations of horse racing, trackside at meetings and casino gambling are only permitted in the states of Goa and Sikkim. With regards to online gambling, neither the Public Gambling Act nor the IT Act of India specifically prohibit online gambling but it is considered to be illegal nonetheless.
It seems that the province of Sikkim is keen to licence online gambling in order to make the most of the huge revenues which the industry could proffer. Though Sikkim only has around 600,000 inhabitants, the rest of the population of India is enormous at around 1.2 billion people. Therefore, despite Sikkim not hosting such a great target audience, there is the likelihood that companies operating with licences in Sikkim would be able to accept bets from the other provinces of India.
Sikkim is looking to open the market to at least 3 companies from September 2010 – granting only a few licences to Indian and / or European companies, despite around 13 online gaming companies applying for a licence. Betfair and William Hill Online have recently submitted their applications for online gambling licenses to the province and there is word that Ladbrokes and 888.com are also interested.
Decisions on who should win these licences are due within the next couple of weeks.
Check out online pokies club in a couple of weeks for an update on the story, or even if you’re just interested in simply learning more about online gambling games like progressive slot machines
This entry was written by Nena on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:34 am and is filed under Blog, News.
