NEW DELHI: The ‘Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025’ sailed through the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
The new Bill, while looking to promote and regulate esports, educational and social games, imposes a complete prohibition on the offering, operation, facilitation, advertisement, promotion, and participation in online money games.
Online money games currently operate in the absence of a dedicated institutional and legal framework. According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, was brought forward to protect society from the harmful effects of the misuse of technology.
“This bill encourages e-sports and online social games while prohibiting harmful online money gaming services, advertisements, and financial transactions related to them,” the ministry said. “The bill also outlaws all online betting and gambling activities — from online fantasy sports to online gambling (like Poker, Rummy and other card games) and online lotteries,” it added.
The government said it had taken into consideration how such addiction left families in distress and drove people to suicide.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, however, made the valid point that the Bill would more than likely drive the online real money gaming sector underground and give rise to the mafia. “When you ban it, unfortunately, it goes underground, and that’s where criminal mafias step in and profit from it,” Telegraph India quotes Tharoor as saying.
“In my view, many countries have studied this issue in great detail and concluded that legalising and taxing online gaming allows governments to generate funds that can be used for various worthy causes,” Tharoor added.
His party colleague Karti Chidambaram posted on X: “The proposed online gaming bill, The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, is being introduced without industry consultation (and) is a knee-jerk reaction that could prove counterproductive. It risks creating significant national security concerns by driving financial transactions offshore and pushing users towards the dark web.”
The Telegraph quotes several experts as having said online money gaming platforms should be regulated instead of banned, observing that lakhs of jobs were dependent on it.
According to Chidambaram, it will wipe out ₹20,000 crore in GST and TDS revenues (2024 data), besides $6 billion in investments.
Probir Roy Chowdhury, partner at JSA Advocates & Solicitors, said these platforms empowered individuals to monetise their skills in a legally recognised format that the government could easily regulate to ensure a safe ecosystem. “This proposed ban represents a sharp policy reversal, abandoning the government’s earlier plan for industry self-regulation under the 2021 IT Intermediary Rules. Such a drastic shift signals to investors that the government can arbitrarily dismantle a thriving sector, creating significant regulatory risk,” he said.
Once cleared by both Houses of Parliament (it has next to be passed the Rajya Sabha), offering or facilitating online money gaming will become a punishable offence, with jail terms of up to three years and fines of up to ₹1 crore. Advertising such games could attract two years in prison or ₹50 lakh fine.
