As online gaming surged during the COVID-19 lockdown, Tamil Nadu soon found itself confronted with a pressing issue: addiction, suicides, and financial ruin linked to real-money gaming disguised as harmless play. The line between gaming and gambling blurred, raising urgent questions of public safety and constitutional rights. In response, the state introduced the Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority (Real Money Games) Regulations, 2025. This is an ambitious attempt to regulate this space after the court had previously declared its laws unconstitutional. However, critical gaps remain in defining skill vs. chance, enforcing proportional safeguards, and preserving digital freedoms.

Origins: From Tragedy to Ordinance

In response to the surge of online gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, the state government promulgated the Tamil Nadu Gaming and Police Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020. The government sought to amend the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act, 1930, the Chennai City Police Act, 1888, and the Tamil Nadu District Police Act, 1859. Section 3A was inserted, making it illegal to make bets online using any electronic device and to make electronic fund transfers to facilitate such activities. Violating the same could lead to imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years, a fine of up to ₹10,000, or both.

Legislative Escalation and Judicial Scrutiny

Subsequently, the Tamil Nadu Gaming and Police Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, replaced the 2020 Ordinance. This act imposed a blanket ban on all online games played for stakes. However, in the case of Junglee Games India Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Tamil Nadu, the Madras High Court held that this law was unconstitutional as it infringed Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. Applying K.R. Lakshmanan v. State of Tamil Nadu, the Court distinguished games of skill (which enjoy constitutional protection) from games of chance (to be regulated). It further held that while games of skill may have a little element of chance. Here, the dominant factor must be the player’s skill, knowledge, training, or experience and, as such, cannot be equated with gambling. The Court expanded on the principle that activities such as skill games are not to be considered res extra commercium and, therefore, enjoy constitutional protection.

The 2022 Act: A Dual Approach to Prohibition and Regulation

The legislature enacted the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Act, 2022, to balance public safety and constitutional freedoms. This act has set up a bifurcated system that prohibits games of chance and regulates games of skill. It also established an online gaming authority called the Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority (TNOGA) to ensure compliance and licensing. This act classified rummy and poker as games of chance, and hence, there was an explicit prohibition. However, this very classification came as a challenge before the Madras High Court in Director General of Police v. Junglee Games. While the High Court upheld the act’s validity, it struck down the misclassification. It reiterated that rummy and poker are games of skill and hence, they have constitutional protection from prohibition.

The Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority (Real Money Games) Regulations, 2025

These regulations define “online real money games” in Regulation 3 as online games where a user deposits cash or kind with the expectation of earning winnings on that deposit. They operationalise the 2022 Act with specific compliance requirements listed under Regulation 4. They are as follows:

• Age Restriction: No person under 18 shall participate in any online real money games. This provision seeks to protect minors from financial and psychological risks associated with online gaming.

• Mandatory KYC Compliance: All players must undergo KYC verification upon creating their account on a gaming platform. Verification involves an Aadhaar-based authentication procedure supplemented by a second-layer OTP sent to the mobile number linked with a user’s Aadhaar card. The game providers must enforce the KYC process before a player can proceed with gameplay.

• Addiction Warnings and Duration Alerts: Online real-money gaming setups must ensure the pop-up warning appears after over one hour of continuous gameplay. The warnings must reappear every 30 minutes and clearly show the user’s total playtime. The login page must remain adorned with the cautionary phrase, “ONLINE GAMING IS ADDICTIVE IN NATURE,” visible in a prominent character size.

• Spending Controls and Financial Transparency: The players must have an option to impose their daily, weekly, and monthly limits on their deposits. Upon making any deposit, a pop-up message needs to appear reminding the player of the financial limits set by themselves, as well as how much they have spent so far. The platform must show this message in bold letters and stand out clearly on the screen.

• Black Hours: The regulations prohibit online gameplay between 12 AM and 5 AM IST.

Legal Analysis and Constitutional Challenges

Though these regulations purport to exempt skill games, they contain no constitutional definition or determination to differentiate skill games from gambling. For instance, a bench of Justice Sastri and Shah in R.M.D. Chamarbaugwala v. Union of India emphasises that games in which skill is predominant are protected as mere business, while those in which is predominant can be prohibited. Similarly, in the case of State of Andhra Pradesh v. K. Satyanarayana (1968), the court considered rummy a skill-based game despite random card dealing.

The precedents in the Chamarbaugwala and Lakshmanan cases show the Supreme Court’s stance. The court underlines that contests in which success depends primarily on skill by the player and not on chance are not gambling. Hence, they lay outside the purview of a regulation intended to curb the activity. The Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Act has muddled this important distinction. By banning “games of chance” without a clear skill-versus-chance test, the law opens the door to arbitrary enforcement. The situation worsens when combined with the lack of a procedural mechanism for an independent review. This lack of a procedural mechanism could lead to inconsistent enforcement and interpretation of the regulations, which could undermine the regulatory framework for online gaming in Tamil Nadu.

Regulators may just go ahead and declare a popular game with the people as unlawful. This, in turn, undermines legal certainty and offends settled constitutional jurisprudence on economic liberty. On the other hand, jurisdictions like the UK have clear threshold inquiries: whether the game “depends entirely on chance” to conduct a regulatory classification, thus ensuring administrative restraint and predictability. The mandatory Aadhaar-based KYC raises serious constitutional concerns under Article 21, especially after the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgment. The Supreme Court placed the state intrusion on the right of informational privacy under the proportionality test: it should serve a legitimate purpose and be the least intrusive to achieve that purpose. The mandatory Aadhaar-based KYC could potentially violate the right to privacy under Article 21, as it involves collecting and using sensitive personal information without a clear and proportionate justification.

Here, using a centralised biometric identity system to verify the age and genuineness of gamers appears to be manifestly disproportional. More recently, passports were declared adequate identity verification in the Noel Harper v. Union of India. The insistence by the Tamil Nadu government on Aadhaar without empirical proof as to why other government-issued photo IDs are inadequate would appear constitutionally offensive. By insisting that biometric data must be part of the gatekeeping mechanism to legitimate activity, the state risks disproportionately infringing on the citizens’ right to informational self-determination. While conflating gaming with gambling, in its crude form, the TNOGA violates constitutional principles concerning privacy and proportionality of state action.

Conclusion

Tamil Nadu’s journey from a 2020 Ordinance to a structured regulatory regime in 2025 marks progress in legal sophistication. Moving from outright bans to calibrated regulation is indeed a welcome development. However, the state has not considered definitional clarity, constitutional scrutiny of proportionality, and technological perspectives. The Madras High Court, in the Junglee Games judgment, said that anything wherein skill predominates could not be considered gambling and hence prohibited under any existing law. Where chance takes its sway and dominates the activity, imposing regulatory restrictions poses a justifiable question. Socrates once remarked, “Anything in excess is poison.”

The same principle is echoed in Tamil Nadu’s balancing act between digital freedom and regulatory responsibility. To serve as a national model, Tamil Nadu must introduce an independent skill-game classification panel, permit alternate ID verification methods, and ensure judicial review of bans. These safeguards will align the framework with constitutional rights. With such reforms, the state can effectively balance public welfare and digital freedom.