A blue ribbon panel examining legal reforms in India has backed away from statements that appeared to support legalizing betting as a way to combat corruption in sports.
“Match-fixing and sports fraud should be specifically made criminal offences with severe punishments,” the Law Commission said in a written report to the government that has come under fire from lawmakers by including a suggestion that regulation may be preferable to a total betting ban, a policy supported by the governing Congress Party but which the report suggests could prove futile from a practical standpoint.
“It has been recommended that effective regulation remains the only viable option to control gambling if it is not possible to enforce a complete ban in order to prevent unlawful activities,” the report stated.
The question of legalizing cricket betting came to the fore after an independent investigation into a 2013 match-fixing scandal concluded that law enforcement lacked strong enough tools to detect fraud and that regulation would “reduce the involvement of black money and the influence of the underworld”.
In essence, the Law Commission, a body comprised of legal experts appointed by the government and headed by a former justice of the Supreme Court of India, agreed, saying “the straitjacket prohibition” on gambling had resulted in a “rampant” increase in illegal gambling.
“It has reached a point where the state machinery is finding it difficult to completely curb it,” the commission stated. “Guided by this realization, one possible way out would be to legalize sports betting, which would go a long way in regulating and controlling the same, while also earning huge revenues by taxing it. In fact, countries like Australia, United Kingdom, South Africa, Sri Lanka and New Zealand have taken a step in this direction, legalizing and regulating betting in sports.”
Opposition leader Manish Tewari quickly responded, saying, “If you legalize betting on sports, not only will you destroy sports, but turn every paan (betel leaf) shop of this country into a Juye Ka Adda (gambling den).
“The reason why most of the Indian states do not have lottery or the fact that lottery is banned, is because of the extremely negative social implications of gambling,” he said.
The Congress Party also has rejected the recommendation, and in the face of mounting political criticism the commission quickly issued a clarification through the Ministry of Law & Justice: “It has been strongly and categorically recommended that legalizing betting and gambling in the present scenario is not desirable, and that a complete ban on unlawful betting and gambling must be ensured.”
