Previously proposed anti-fixing legislation was quietly dropped in 2004

The IPL spot-fixing scandal has pushed the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Sports to draft new legislation criminalising such conduct in sports in order to serve as a deterrent in the future. But this isn’t the first time India has considered a law making fixing a criminal act. The Indian Express reports that back in 2004, the Sporting Events (Prevention of Dishonest Practices) Bill was being supposed to be introduced in Parliament but wound up disappearing instead. Work on the law began under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in 2003 but continued under UPA-1 and then sports minister Sunil Dutt. [caption id=“attachment_818117” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Law Minister Kapil Sibal has his ministry working on an anti-fixing law. Reuters[/caption] According to the Indian Express, the bill stated that any sportsperson or team manager who “accepts or attempts to obtain or agrees to accept any valuable thing, pecuniary advantage or any other gratification for dishonestly performing in a sporting event with a view to fixing the result of such sporting event in a particular manner in his capacity as such member or manager” would have been “punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine or with both”. The punishment for someone convicted of fixing a game was jail time of up to seven years and/or a fine. If a team captain was convicted of fixing, then the punishment jumped to 10 years. It also proposed criminalising betting on matches by players or officials with a prison sentence of up to seven years. You can read the full story here.