India asks Google to stop displaying online betting ads: Report

The Indian government has asked Google to not display surrogate ads of overseas betting companies, the Mint reported on Wednesday.

In a letter sent to Alphabet Inc's Google last week, the Ministry of Information and Broadcast asked the company to immediately drop all advertising, direct or surrogate, from betting platforms like Fairplay, PariMatch, Betway in search results and YouTube, the report added.

“After our last advisory on October 3, TV channels and OTT (Over-the-top) players stopped showing surrogate ads of online betting firms, but it was brought to our notice that many such ads are running on YouTube and Google. We have asked Google to stop this immediately," a senior ministry official told Mint.

On December 4, Reuters reported that India's planned regulation of online gaming will apply to all real-money games after the prime minister's office overruled a proposal to only regulate games of skill and leave out games of chance.

This also comes two months after India asked broadcasters and video streaming services to drop advertisements promoting online betting.

In October, The Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a Bill to prohibit online gambling and to regulate online games in the State.

The All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) had then urged the Tamil Nadu government to reconsider the ordinance passed by the state to ban online skill games. The ordinance was termed “unconstitutional".

The gaming body had also said that the ordinance  “disregards six decades of established legal jurisprudence”.