The Supreme Court on Thursday transferred to itself four Public Interest Litigations (PILs) pending in various high courts that seek a ban on opinion trading platforms, which are accused of facilitating illegal betting and gambling activities.
A bench comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan passed the order on a transfer petition filed by Probo Media Technologies Pvt Ltd, a company operating one such opinion trading platform. The court directed the high courts of Bombay, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh to send all records of the pending PILs to the apex court for consolidated hearing.
“There are four PILs pending before different high courts — two in Bombay, one in Gujarat, and one in Chhattisgarh,” said senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the petitioner company. Singhvi suggested that the cases could be consolidated and heard by the Bombay High Court.
However, the bench rejected the proposal, stating, “All these four PILs should be heard by this court.” The Supreme Court’s order mandates the registries of the respective high courts to transfer the entire case files to the Supreme Court, which will notify the matters for hearing as directed by the Chief Justice of India.
Senior advocate Gaurav Aggarwal, appearing for petitioner and social activist Sumit Kapurbhai Prajapati in one of the PILs, opposed the consolidation. He argued that the issues raised in the various petitions were not identical, with the Chhattisgarh petition specifically challenging the legislative framework governing gambling, rather than focusing solely on operational concerns of opinion trading platforms.
The top court had earlier, on May 22, issued notice on Probo’s transfer petition and directed the high courts in Gujarat and Chhattisgarh not to proceed with the cases for the time being.
Opinion trading platforms function similarly to online marketplaces, allowing users to stake money on the outcome of real-world events. These platforms typically frame propositions as binary “yes” or “no” questions — for example, “Will a particular political party win an election?” — and reward users financially if their predictions turn out to be correct. Critics allege that such mechanisms amount to unregulated and illegal betting.
