The online gaming bill, which sailed through the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, seeks to ban all online games played with money to curb rising instances of addiction and financial fraud.
The new bill also prohibits advertising and promotion of money games across all forms of media.
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 said the bill would drive the online gaming industry 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.”
“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,” he 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.”
Several experts said online money gaming platforms should be regulated instead of banned, observing that lakhs of jobs were dependent on it.
According to Karti, 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.