In a parliamentary reply to the Lok Sabha dated April 1, 2026, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology noted that action had been taken on 8,376 website URLs tied to betting, gambling, and gaming (including offshore ones). Of these cases, more than 4,800 came after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, which bans online money gaming and restricts related financial transactions and advertisements.
Enforcement Has Scaled Up Fast
The aforementioned parliamentary reply has placed the current crackdown in a broader context. It involves the IT Act and 2021 intermediary rules, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and GST action against unregistered offshore entities.
The significance here is that the government no longer sees the matter as strictly one of content regulation. The government now looks at offshore betting as a combination of platform regulation, payment methods, advertising practices, cybersecurity risk, and criminal enforcement. The response also highlighted an old divide in Indian policymaking. Police and public order are State subjects, and States/UTs are primarily responsible for action on illegal betting and gambling, while the Centre addresses the digital, intermediary, and tax side.
The Access Problem Has Not Been Solved
This dilemma for policymakers is that the measures taken against volumes and continued access seem to be proceeding on separate trajectories. According to the CUTS International study in the Delhi NCR region that surveyed 1,000 adult respondents with pre-ban participation in online money-based gaming, the percentage of offshore usage increased from 68.3% prior to the ban to 82% after the ban. The percentage of daily offshore usage also increased from 3.4% to 42.3%. It was also noted that users continued to make payments through UPI and banking services.
A separate study carried out by CUTS in Tamil Nadu indicates the same trend. In that sample, the share of respondents who reported using offshore platforms increased from 67.8% to 83%, representing a behavioral change of 15.2%. As CUTS states, the results were based on surveys conducted in targeted samples of adults with pre-ban exposure to real-money gaming rather than a complete census of the entire market. Hence, changes should be considered behavioral in nature as opposed to a market-wide analysis.
Why the Latest Number Matters
But the number of 8,376 remains notable. It proves continuity in efforts, as well as a much faster pace of action due to the new legislation passed in 2025. Yet at the same time, it raises another more challenging question – whether blocking URLs can make any difference when the rest of the infrastructure is left untouched.
At a MediaNama panel in September 2025, Dhruv Garg said that the offshore business sector is a “$20 billion” industry, while the tax evasion linked to this sector goes beyond $4 billion. These figures have been given as approximations, not as verified market figures, but they do help understand the reasons behind this close attention to this problem.
The latest revelation by India suggests that the enforcement process is expanding while offshore reach proves increasingly adaptable. This government may raise the cost of distribution, but without addressing access, payment, and demand for the product simultaneously, blocking numbers may continue to grow without a reduction in offshore play.
