Earlier this year, the Telangana police filed a First Information Report (FIR) against 29 celebrities and influencers, including popular figures like Rana Daggubati, Prakash Raj, Vijay Devarakonda, and Manchu Lakshmi for allegedly promoting illegal betting and gambling apps through their social media platforms.
Sources close to Rana Daggubati had told NDTV that a legal team had vetted the endorsement contract before he signed it. He also said Rana had only promoted skill-based games that the Supreme Court has said are legal, that too in regions where it is allowed, and his association had ended in 2017.
Complainant PM Phanindra Sarma, a 32-year-old businessman, had claimed that celebrities are allegedly accepting large sums of money to promote various betting platforms, which encourage users to gamble their hard-earned money.
What are your thoughts in this? Do you think celebrities should not be allowed to promote gambling or should they just be more careful about what kind of gambling they are promoting? Is it ok as long as any gambling promoted is legal?
This sounds like a tug of war between celebrities who are probably following the law at the time the contract was written and politicians who are trying to sound aggressive by targeting a harder to defense industry. If gambling is legal and advertising gambling is legal within certain parameters, then it's just political theater as they try to take these celebrities to caught when they've done nothing wrong. They are an easy target because so many religions and other groups can be convinced that gambling is "evil" and should be outlawed. That being said, it should be investigated if people are breaking advertising laws and there will be a certain minority that try to hide their affiliation and payments in return for promotion, which most countries do not allow.