India's Supreme Court backs online lottery ban

In Sikkim, India the All Kerala Online Lottery Dealers Association lost its attempt to fight a ban on internet lottery activity imposed by the state government of Kerala when the Supreme Court rejected its appeal this week.

“If online or internet lottery is to be prohibited by a State then that online lottery or internet lottery of all States, including that State, also has to be prohibited. Viewed from this angle, we are of the considered opinion that State of Kerala was well within its rights to prohibit the sale of online or Internet lotteries in its State and there is no fault in it,” Justice Agarwal, who authored the verdict for the Bench, wrote.

The judges found that lotteries constituted gambling, terming it a “pestilence more harmful than the common forms of gambling”.

“Experience has shown that the common forms of gambling are comparatively innocuous when placed in contrast with widespread pestilence of lotteries. The former are confined to a few persons and places, but the latter infests the whole community; it enters every dwelling; it reaches every class; it preys upon the hard earnings of the poor; it plunders the ignorant and the simple,” the judgment observed.

The Kerala state government initially banned all lotteries in January 2005, but three months later confined the prohibition to the online version.