New Delhi, October 24, 2025— The Supreme Court of India has taken a big step toward figuring out what will happen to the country’s controversial online gaming business by asking the Union government if it is allowed to completely prohibit online gaming and betting sites.
Justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan consented to look at a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that says a lot of gambling and betting websites are doing well by pretending to be real social and e-sports games. The bench asked the Centre to help the court with this important case. It told the petitioner’s lawyer to give the panel lawyer for the Union government, VC Bharathi, the whole case file. The case will be heard again in two weeks.
The bench’s short order from the October 17 hearing said, “We ask Mr. Bharathi to look into the petition and help us on the next date of hearing.”
Petitioner Wants a Nationwide Ban and Tax Recovery
The Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC), a public policy think tank, filed the PIL. Advocates Virag Gupta and Rupali Panwar are representing the group. CASC wants all online gaming and betting sites to be illegal in the whole country. The plea, which was submitted by lawyer Vishal Arun Mishra, makes a number of important requests:
Blocking of Websites: Section 69A of the IT Act says that illegal betting and gambling websites must be blocked.
Payments Restriction: Telling the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), and other UPI platforms to stop processing payments for gaming enterprises that are not registered in India or are based outside of India.
Tax Recovery: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and Interpol are looking into getting back more than ₹2 lakh crore in unpaid taxes from offshore gambling companies.
Regulating the App Store: Making sure that game businesses don’t collect data on kids and that app shops (Apple and Google) only list licensed apps.
The “National Crisis” and the New Online Gaming Act
The CASC petition says that the uncontrolled growth of online money games has turned into a “national crisis,” causing huge financial losses, addiction, mental health problems, and even suicides. It says that real-money gambling sites, which are often backed by famous cricketers and movie stars, are using false algorithms to help cybercriminals and money launderers.
The PIL points out how big the sector is by saying that almost 65 crore individuals, or more than half of India’s population, are playing these games. This makes the platforms over ₹1.8 lakh crore a year.
The petition also asks the Supreme Court to make clear what the newly passed Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, covers and to make sure that it is in conformity with state laws that make gambling and betting illegal.
Parliament passed the Act in August to try to fix the terrible social and economic effects of internet betting. It sets up a nationwide system to tell the difference between legal e-sports and casual gaming and real-money gambling. The new rule makes it illegal to play real-money games online and to advertise them. Service providers can face up to three years in prison and fines of up to ₹1 crore, while promoters and advertisements can face up to two years in prison and ₹50 lakh in fines.
Centralized Handling of Challenges
The Supreme Court is already looking at a bunch of petitions about whether the 2025 statute is constitutional, so this direct look at a full ban comes at a bad time. In the past month, Justices Pardiwala and Viswanathan moved all of the challenges that were still open in other high courts to their own court. These courts included those in Karnataka, Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh. On September 8, the Union government, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, said that a centralized adjudication was needed to stop inconsistent verdicts on the law. The President has already agreed to this.
The results of this PIL and the obstacles that go along with it could shape the future rules for India’s online gaming industry, which is growing quickly but is also quite controversial.