The Government of India has sought additional time from the Supreme Court before the pronouncement of judgment in the high-stakes Goods and Services Tax (GST) case involving online gaming. On Monday, government counsel Chandrashekara Bharathi requested the apex court to grant one more week to file supplementary submissions, after previously seeking two weeks.
The matter pertains to the applicability of GST on online games — a dispute pegged at nearly ₹2.5 lakh crore, making it one of the largest tax cases in India’s legal history.
On August 12, a division bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan had reserved its verdict after marathon hearings in a batch of petitions filed by gaming companies such as Gameskraft and Delta Corp, along with industry bodies including the All India Gaming Federation (AIGF), E-Gaming Federation (EGF), and the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS).
The government’s request for more time comes just weeks after Parliament passed legislation banning the online real money gaming industry. Legal experts suggest that this shift in policy could influence the Centre’s final written stance before the court.
During the hearings, on August 12, senior counsels Arvind Datar, Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, Tarun Gulati, Balbir Singh, and C. Aryama Sundaram presented detailed arguments defending online skill-based gaming. They maintained that games of skill cannot be equated with “betting and gambling” as defined under the Constitution, citing landmark Supreme Court judgments in the RMDC and K.R. Lakshmanan cases.
The industry had also challenged the Revenue Department’s attempt to classify online rummy stakes as “actionable claims” under GST law, arguing that such a move had no legal basis. Similarly, the concept of “House Advantage” used by the government for casino taxation was dismissed as a notional calculation without merit.
The rejoinders stressed that both tax jurisprudence and constitutional interpretation clearly distinguish games of skill from gambling, urging the court to quash the tax demands and dismiss the government’s petitions.
