COUNTRY GUIDE

India Online Casino Guide

Illustrated globe, atlas and casino games

Published by Casino News Daily editorial teamReviewed byFilip RadulovicOur editorial approach

India has no single national gambling code. Under the Constitution, “betting and gambling” is a subject on which the states legislate, so the law on casinos, card rooms and wagering has developed state by state, largely on the basis of colonial-era statutes. That pattern changed for the online sector in August 2025, when Parliament enacted the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (often abbreviated to PROGA). The Act prohibits “online money games” nationwide, whether they are games of skill or of chance, and its implementing rules came into force on 1 May 2026. Land-based casinos remain lawful only in the few places where a state has authorised them, chiefly Goa and Sikkim. The constitutional validity of the 2025 Act is under challenge in the Supreme Court.

Key points

Gambling is primarily a state subject; the central Public Gambling Act, 1867 and a range of state statutes prohibit gaming houses but exempt games of “mere skill”.
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 bans offering, advertising and facilitating payments for online money games, with prison terms of up to three years for offering such games.
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026 took effect on 1 May 2026 and set up the Online Gaming Authority of India.
Land-based casinos operate lawfully only under specific state authorisation, notably in Goa (five-star hotels and offshore vessels) and Sikkim.
The government reported that about 8,400 betting and gambling websites and apps had been blocked by March 2026.
A consolidated constitutional challenge to the 2025 Act was pending before the Supreme Court at the time of review.

Last reviewed: 5 October 2026.

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Historical development

The oldest statute still relevant to gambling in India is the Public Gambling Act, 1867, a law of the colonial period. It penalises keeping or being found in a “common gaming-house”, meaning premises kept for gaming from which the keeper makes a profit. Its penalties are modest by modern standards: the base offence of keeping a gaming house carries a fine of up to 200 rupees or imprisonment for up to three months, and section 4 provides a fine of up to 100 rupees or up to one month’s imprisonment for a person found gaming in such a house. Several states have adopted the Act with heavier penalties. Section 12 states that nothing in the Act applies to “any game of mere skill wherever played”, an exemption that has shaped Indian gambling law ever since.

After independence, many states enacted their own statutes. Examples include the Delhi Public Gambling Act, 1955 and the West Bengal Gambling and Prize Competitions Act, 1957, the latter of which treats games such as bridge, poker and rummy differently from other gaming, according to a summary by the law firm S.S. Rana & Co. The same source notes that Assam and Odisha prohibit betting and gambling outright.

The Supreme Court developed the distinction between games of skill and games of chance in a series of decisions. As summarised by the Supreme Court Observer, State of Bombay v R.M.D. Chamarbaugwala (1957) held that games in which skill predominates are not gambling; State of Andhra Pradesh v K. Satyanarayana (1967) treated rummy as a game of skill; and K.R. Lakshmanan v State of Tamil Nadu (1996) applied a “preponderance of skill” test and found horse-race wagering to be skill-based. This case law allowed a large real-money skill-gaming industry (fantasy sports, rummy and poker platforms) to grow online between roughly 2010 and 2025, while games of chance remained prohibited in most states.

Legal framework

Constitutional division of powers

Entry 34 of the State List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution covers “betting and gambling”. This is the basis on which states legislate on gambling, and it is also the central issue in the current challenge to the 2025 central Act, which petitioners argue encroaches on state competence (see Supreme Court Observer, case page). The Union government, for its part, relies on Union List entries such as those covering communications, industries, inter-state commerce and foreign trade, according to the Supreme Court Observer’s analysis.

Goa

In Goa, casinos operate under an exception in the Goa, Daman and Diu Public Gambling Act, 1976. Section 13A allows the state government to authorise “games of electronic amusement/slot machines in Five Star Hotels and such table games and gaming on board in vessels offshore”, and provides that the Act does not apply to games so authorised. Outside that exception, the Act penalises keeping a common gaming house (up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to 5,000 rupees) and gaming in one, with minimum fines that rise for repeat offences.

Sikkim

Sikkim regulates land-based casinos under the Sikkim Casinos (Control and Tax) Act, 2002, which permits casinos in five-star hotels, and legislated for online gaming in the Sikkim Online Gaming (Regulation) Act, 2008. According to an S.S. Rana & Co. analysis, a 2015 amendment confined licensed online gaming to “intranet terminals at gaming parlours” within the state, rather than websites available across India; at the time of that article (2021), four provisional licences had been issued, two of which were operating. How far state-level online licensing can survive the 2025 central Act is one of the questions raised by the pending litigation.

Tamil Nadu and other states

Before the central Act, several states attempted to restrict online real-money gaming themselves. Tamil Nadu’s Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Act, 2022 was upheld by the Madras High Court on 9 November 2023, but the court held that its prohibition could apply only to games of chance and not to rummy and poker, which it treated as games of skill (Bar & Bench report). An earlier Karnataka ban was struck down in 2022 (Supreme Court Observer, cited above).

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025

The Bill was introduced in and passed by the Lok Sabha on 20 August 2025 and passed by the Rajya Sabha on 21 August 2025, according to the PRS Legislative Research bill summary. It received presidential assent on 22 August 2025. The Act creates three categories:

Online money game: a game in which a user pays money or other stakes in expectation of winning money or other enrichment, “regardless of skill/chance basis”. Stakes include credits, coins and tokens equivalent or convertible to money.
E-sport: a competitive game determined by factors such as physical dexterity, mental agility and strategic thinking, played in organised events without bets or stakes.
Online social game: a game offered solely for recreation, entertainment or skill development, which may charge a subscription but involves no monetary winnings from stakes.

Online money games are prohibited. The Act bans offering or aiding them, advertising them, and facilitating financial transactions for them, and empowers the central government to block related information from public access. The government’s Press Information Bureau release on the Act sets out the penalties: for offering or facilitating online money games, imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to one crore rupees (10 million rupees), or both; for advertising, up to two years or a fine of up to 50 lakh rupees (5 million rupees), or both. Repeat convictions attract minimum terms of three years (offering) and two years (advertising), with higher minimum fines. PRS records that the offering and payment offences are cognisable and non-bailable, and that breaches of registration conditions can attract a civil penalty of up to 10 lakh rupees.

Regulator and licensing model

The 2025 Act is a prohibition statute for real-money online play, combined with a registration regime for permitted categories. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, published in the Gazette on 22 April 2026, came into force on 1 May 2026. They establish the Online Gaming Authority of India as an attached office of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), chaired ex officio by an Additional Secretary of MeitY, with Joint Secretary-level members from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Department of Financial Services, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and the Department of Legal Affairs. The Authority is designed to work as a “digital office”.

Under the Rules, the Authority determines whether a game is an online money game within 90 days of a complete application. Registration, valid for up to 10 years, is required for e-sports and for other categories where the government so notifies. Online money games cannot qualify as e-sports, and registration in a permitted category cannot be used to authorise a prohibited game. There is therefore no licence of any kind that permits an online casino to serve users in India.

For land-based gambling, licensing remains with the states. Goa authorises casinos under section 13A of its 1976 Act, and Sikkim under its 2002 casinos legislation. Most states license no casinos at all. State lotteries and horse-race betting at licensed racecourses are separate, long-standing exceptions that vary by state.

Online gambling and enforcement

Before 2025, Indian law did not expressly address offshore online casinos, and their legal position was widely described as a grey area. The 2025 Act removed that ambiguity for the purposes of central law: offering an online money game to users in India, advertising one, or processing payments for one is an offence. The Rules state an objective of “preventing banks, payment systems and financial institutions from facilitating transactions” linked to prohibited games.

The main enforcement tool is blocking, meaning an order requiring internet service providers and intermediaries to stop serving a website or app to users in India. In reply to a Lok Sabha question on 1 April 2026, MeitY said that 8,376 website URLs linked to online betting and gambling had been blocked as of 28 March 2026, using powers under the Information Technology Act, 2000, the 2025 Act and other statutes; more than 4,800 of those blocks followed the 2025 Act (MediaNama, April 2026). The public broadcaster reported on 20 March 2026 that a further 300 sites and apps, including online casinos offering slots, roulette and live dealer tables, had been blocked, bringing the total to about 8,400 (All India Radio News).

The Act’s practical effect on the domestic skill-gaming industry was immediate. Petitioners in the Supreme Court told the court that banks and intermediaries began withdrawing services within days of the Act’s publication (exchange4media, December 2025), and MediaNama reported that some large fantasy and real-money platforms discontinued paid contests (MediaNama, September 2025).

Position of players

The 2025 Act’s penal provisions are directed at those who offer, advertise or facilitate online money games. PRS Legislative Research notes that players are not explicitly penalised under the Act, and the government has presented the law as protecting users rather than prosecuting them. That does not mean that playing at an offshore online casino is lawful or protected. The service itself is prohibited, payment channels are to be blocked, and sites are routinely made inaccessible. A user has no regulated operator to complain to and no domestic regulator to enforce payment of winnings.

State laws can also apply to individuals. The Public Gambling Act and its state equivalents penalise gaming in a common gaming house, although those provisions were drafted for physical premises and their application to online play from home is not settled in the sources reviewed for this guide. This guide has not found an authoritative record of individual players being prosecuted under the 2025 Act; readers should not treat that as an assurance of immunity.

Taxation

Gambling is heavily taxed where it is lawful. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate on online money gaming, casinos, betting, horse racing and lotteries was set at 28% from 1 October 2023, calculated on the full value of deposits rather than on the operator’s commission. The GST Council then raised the rate on these services to 40% with effect from 22 September 2025 (MediaNama).

For individuals, winnings from lotteries, betting and gambling have long been taxed at a flat rate of 30%. Finance Act 2023 introduced a specific charge of 30% on net winnings from online games (section 115BBJ of the Income-tax Act, 1961, from 1 April 2023) and tax deduction at source on withdrawals (section 194BA, from 1 July 2023), with no deduction for expenses and no basic exemption limit, as explained by Taxmann. Because online money games are now prohibited, these provisions mainly matter for past winnings and for lawful prize-based activities; readers with tax questions should take professional advice.

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

India has not built a national self-exclusion register or a licensed-operator harm-minimisation system of the kind found in regulated European markets. The policy response to online gambling harm has instead been prohibition: the government describes the 2025 framework as intended to “safeguard citizens” from online money games (PIB, April 2026). Tamil Nadu’s 2022 Act, as narrowed by the Madras High Court, left the state free to regulate games of skill through measures such as age limits and time limits.

Anyone worried about their own or someone else’s gambling can find general guidance in our responsible gambling guide. Help is also available through public mental health services.

Recent and upcoming developments

The constitutional challenge is the main open question. In September 2025 the Supreme Court transferred to itself challenges that had been filed in the Karnataka, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh High Courts. In December 2025 it referred the matter to a three-judge bench, without staying the Act (exchange4media). According to the Supreme Court Observer, the case was still pending after a hearing on 5 August 2026 before a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant. The issues include:

whether Parliament had legislative competence, given that betting and gambling are on the State List (Entry 34);
whether a blanket ban on real-money games of skill is an unreasonable restriction on the freedom of trade under Article 19(1)(g);
whether abandoning the skill and chance distinction is arbitrary under Article 14; and
whether the ban unreasonably affects livelihoods under Article 21.

Petitioners include Head Digital Works, operator of the A23 rummy platform. The outcome will determine whether the nationwide prohibition stands, is narrowed (for example, to games of chance), or is struck down in favour of state regulation. Until the court rules, the Act and the 2026 Rules are in force.

Casino listings for players in India

The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is authorised in India. Offering online money games, including online casino games, to users in India is prohibited under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, and no Indian authority licenses online casinos. The listings must not be read as an indication that playing at these sites is lawful. For the official position, see the government’s explanation of the 2026 Rules.

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India Online Casino Guide

Key points

Online casinos for India

Historical development

Legal framework

Constitutional division of powers

Goa

Sikkim

Tamil Nadu and other states

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025

Regulator and licensing model

Online gambling and enforcement

Position of players

Taxation

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Recent and upcoming developments

Casino listings for players in India

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