NEW DELHI: The Congress said it won't allow the government to legalise betting in sports as the move had huge social ramifications. The party stance came a day after reports that the law commission recommended the same.
"The government priority seems to be that you legalize betting in sports. So, when there is huge economic distress, across the length and breadth of the country, agrarian distress, unemployment, jobs not being created, what is the BJP obsessed with or its instrumentalities obsessed with? How do you legalize betting in sports," Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.
"We would like to put it on record, that the reason why most of the Indian states do not have lottery or the fact that lottery is banned, is because of the extremely negative social implications of the vice of gambling and if you legalize betting in a sport, not only will you destroy the sport, but you will turn every 'Paan shop' of this country into a 'Jue Ka Adda' (gambling centre)," he said,adding "we won't let that happen."
Noting the social implications of such irresponsibility were going to be enormous, the Congress leader said all this was happening because the finance ministry had fallen between two stools. "So, therefore, you have an acting finance minister and you have a pretending finance minister.
So the acting one does not know whether he is acting and the pretending one does not know whether he is pretending and therefore, the economy of the country is like a rudderless boat on a very choppy ocean," Tewari said referring to union minister Arun Jaitley, who is recovering from a kidney transplant, and incumbent Piyush Goyal, who has so far avoided sitting on the minister's chair.