Maha govt to amend IT Act to regulate online betting: Min

Maharashtra government will amend the Information Technology Act to regulate illegal online betting and curb debit and credit card frauds, Minister of State for Home (Urban) Ranjit Patil told the Legislative Council today.

He was replying to supplementary queries raised on a calling attention motion moved by the Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde.

Patil said that the government would take action in blocking the website of online betting firm "Game King India" and initiate action against its directors.

Munde, raising the motion, had said that the company was running an online betting network, with a draw every 15 minutes, without requisite permissions, adding that it had more than 500 branches nationwide.

Replying to the debate, Patil said that since 2014, 17 cases had been registered against the company.

"The matter is related to cyber security and since the state does not have its own mechanism to detect online fraud, it has to refer it to the Centre's Computer Emergency Response Team to probe it. Following a CERT report, the website will be blocked," Patil said.

While Munde slammed the government saying that police from Indore in Madhya Pradesh had come to arrest the directors of the company, Patil said that police there had taken more than one and half years to act after lodging an FIR.

He said that the state had raised its own MH-CERT and had created 136 posts to tackle online frauds.