With actual cash gaming ban, govt. breaks off from self-regulation makes an attempt

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, which was handed within the Lok Sabha on Wednesday (August 20, 2025), marks a serious and sudden departure for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology from its earlier method of nudging the actual cash gaming (RMG) business to self-regulate. The business, which counts giant companies like Dream11, MPL and PokerBaazi, has largely maintained public silence, however has voiced concern in a letter to Home Minister Amit Shah.

In 2023, the IT Ministry introduced an modification to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, to manage RMG companies, by getting them to arrange a government-registered self-regulatory physique. However, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed reporters on Wednesday the proposals had been rife with conflicts of curiosity. 

In the meantime, complaints mounted from MPs and social organisations, Mr. Vaishnaw mentioned, in regards to the toll that RMG platforms had been exerting on their constituents and households across the nation. “This was throughout celebration traces,” Mr. Vaishnaw mentioned. “In each State we had been listening to these complaints.” Similar pan-partisan tensions preceded the choice by the GST Council in 2023, when a 28% tax was slapped on all deposits in RMG platforms at face worth, versus on the fee, as was the case earlier.

The RMG business has efficiently stalled or fought off State-level bans, due to the courts’ settled view that video games of “talent,” the place a participant’s expertise and smarts can affect the result excess of luck, don’t represent playing. Since States are restricted by the Constitution on regulating video games that aren’t legally recognised as playing, the Union authorities holds the playing cards. And till Wednesday, it appeared {that a} light-touch regime would prevail.

With this Bill, the federal government seeks to render the skill-chance binary moot, presenting the RMG business with maybe its remaining shot at legitimacy on the courts. If the courts don’t facet within the authorities’s favour, the state would proceed to have one more coverage device at its disposal: the rumoured so-called sin tax GST charge of 40%, which might additional pressure the business’s means to stay an attractive possibility for individuals who need to play to win cash.

“Litigation is inevitable,” Meghna Bal, founding father of the tech coverage assume tank Esya Centre mentioned, “as this regulation fails the check of proportionality beneath Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.” Ms. Bal argued that the 2023 IT Rules modification was a possible method to regulate the sector. “There isn’t any rational connection between the regulation and the aim it seeks to serve, because it solely opens up the market additional for unlawful offshore platforms which are driving monetary losses.”

The Bill additionally offers specific readability to esports companies, which supply competition-based video video games, with actual life tournaments gaining growing curiosity and viewership in India. An “authority” can be established by the IT Ministry that might register esports companies in addition to decide whether or not a given platform is an “on-line cash sport” or not.