PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa on Thursday dismissed a plea filed by Shukr Sinai Usgaonkar, a resident of Goa who had challenged sections of the Goa Gambling Act that banned locals from entering casinos for gambling.
Usgaonkar, in his plea before the High Court, argued that the Act in disallowing Goans from entering casinos was violative of the right to equality before law as guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution.
The High Court heard arguments from Usgaonkar, who being a lawyer himself, argued his own petition, and the Advocate General Devidas Pangam before upholding the State’s right to introduce such a ban.
“Gambling is totally prohibited but by way of some exceptions, a certain class of places and people are exempted from such prohibition. The object of the State is naturally to prevent the person domiciled in Goa to be lured into such chance games and to suffer poverty and mental trauma for their families. The classification is founded with the object of preventing the spread of gambling and transforming the exception into a rule,” the High Court bench of Justices M S Sonak and M S Jawalkar ruled.
“The locals will have much greater opportunities for easy access to the casinos as compared to the tourists that visit the State for a limited period. Therefore there is nothing arbitrary or discriminatory in the object or the classification. The petitioner does not challenge the entry of tourists in casinos but insists on permitting him to enter in. Since the petitioner and the tourists belong to separate classes, no case of breach of Article 14 is made out,” the Court ruled.
“The classification between tourists who come to Goa for a few days to entertain themselves and locals domiciled in Goa is based on an intelligible differentia (reasonable basis for differentiation),” the Court said.
Usgaonkar had argued in his petition, that provisions of the Goa Gambling Act, which prohibit the entry into casinos, those who do not possess a ‘tourist permit’ contravene Article 14 of the Constitution of India by prohibiting access to persons, who are permanent residents of Goa.
“The distinction being made between tourists and non-tourists miserably fails the test of reasonable classification which must be fulfilled by any classification to withstand the rigors of Article 14. What is good for tourists cannot be bad for the Goans or non-tourists,” Usgaonkar argued before the Court.
The Goa Legislative Assembly had via an amendment to the Goa Public Gambling Act disallowed the entry of persons into casinos except for ‘tourists’ holding a valid ‘tourist permit’ issued by the Gaming Commissioner. The Act defines a ‘tourist’ as a person or a group of persons, who have attained the age of 21 years, including pilgrims who are on a visit to the State of Goa, and not domiciled or permanently residing in the State of Goa.
While the amendment was enacted back in 2012, an additional section 13(G) was added to the Act in February 2020 making it an offence for any person to enter such a place or area for gaming, designated by the government by notification, without a valid tourist permit.
