Kangna Ranaut, fresh from filming Vikas Bahl's new film Queen in London, managed to strike lucky in an Amsterdam casino, where the film is being shot. The 25 year old star of Rakesh Roshan's Krrish 3, and Sanjay Gupta's Shootout in Wadala had, amazingly, never been in a casino before. At the apparent insistence of a co-star, she played her first ever game of Roulette, and managed to hit a massive win of 300,000 rupees.
The fact that the actress had to travel as far afield as the Netherlands just to go to a casino is a reflection of India's current laws on gambling. At the moment, it is heavily restricted nationwide, and in only two of the 28 states is casino gambling not prohibited, in Sikkim and Goa, and Sikkim is the state with the fewest people while Goa has the smallest area. Of the twelve casinos in Goa, five are offshore, and operate on the Mandovi River. The reason for this is that it circumvents the live gambling laws that apply onshore.
The national level stance on gambling seems fairly nonsensical, given that the government at the state level in Goa is actively promoting these casinos, as they bring in tourists, and therefore revenue, to the area. In 2007 the state government increased the number of licenses available for offshore casinos tenfold, hoping to attract punters from the Arabian peninsula, and also to divert domestic Indian tourists from Nepal, where gambling is legal.
The state is also hoping to emulate the success of Macau, which is a huge hotspot for gambling. With numbers of visitors expected to increase 20 per cent this year, and to hit almost 3 million people, it seems that Goa's gambling industry is becoming quite successful in attracting tourists. While Kangna Ranaut has sworn off gambling forever, perhaps if the success of Goa's offshore casinos continues she might one day be seen in the Casino Royale, which is one of the most successful; perhaps casino gambling might one day soon be fially legalised in India as a whole.
Other figures in the public eye known to have partaken in gambling include Imran Khan, who last year revealed in his book that he paid for some of his political party's campaign by betting on a test match between England and South Africa with his then brother in law Benjamin Goldsmith. As more and more well known figures begin to condone gambling and the prevalence of online gambling continues to rise, it cannot be long before Indian regulators will have to seriously consider the federal legalisation of gambling.
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