Case Law Details
Junglee Games India Private Limited Vs The State of Tamil Nadu (Madras High Court)
The petitioners complain of an over-paternalistic stance taken by the State in bringing about sweeping amendments to an existing law that, according to the petitioners, infringe their fundamental rights and are otherwise unreasonable to the point of being manifestly arbitrary.
2. The challenge here is to Part II of the Tamil Nadu Gaming and Police Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 (Act 1 of 2021), by which the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act, 1930 was amended (hereinafter referred to as the Amending Act). Substantially the same amendments to the Act of 1930 had been previously incorporated in an Ordinance promulgated on November 21, 2020. Act 1 of 2021 came into effect upon it being gazetted on February 25, 2021. The matter also brings to the fore the risks of introducing an amendment to an enactment that predates not only the Constitution, but also the Government of India Act, 1935, which broadly spelt out the areas in which the provincial legislatures could legislate upon.
3. The Amending Act has been challenged, not only on the ground that it turns the original statute on its head, but also in its expansive definition of a word that has been judicially interpreted and, thus, the seemingly blatant attempt to bypass the law declared by courts, including the Supreme Court, by the legal fiction created in the definition. The challenge here is not so much to the legislative competence, but to the extent that a law may be made in respect of a field or allied fields indicated in an Entry in the State List. In effect, the Amending Act, or the relevant part of the Ordinance that preceded it in 2020, has incorporated certain provisions to enlarge the scope and effect of the Act of 1930.
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