India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued a formal advisory directing virtual private network service providers and online intermediaries to stop facilitating user access to blocked betting and prediction market platforms - a move that signals a sharp escalation in enforcement under the country's newly enacted online gaming law. The advisory, issued by MeitY's Cyber Laws Division on April 25, 2026, names platforms such as Polymarket explicitly and warns intermediaries that non-compliance could strip them of critical legal protections. By that point, Indian authorities had already blocked access to more than 8,376 illegal gambling and betting websites.
What the Advisory Requires - and Why It Matters
The directive rests on two interlocking legal pillars. The first is the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, which prohibits real-money gaming activities across all formats within Indian jurisdiction. The second is Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the provision under which the government issues website-blocking orders. MeitY says it observed that certain VPN providers were effectively acting as conduits, allowing users to reach platforms that had already been formally blocked under these authorities.
The advisory asks intermediaries to make reasonable efforts not to host, store, or permit access to unlawful platforms. It also reminds them of their existing obligation under the IT Act to furnish information or technical assistance to government agencies conducting investigative or cybersecurity activities within prescribed timelines. The ministry's warning on Section 79 carries particular weight: that provision grants intermediaries a safe harbor from liability for third-party content, but only when they comply with due diligence requirements. Losing that exemption would expose platforms to direct legal liability for content they passively carry.
Stablecoins and Mirror Domains - The Enforcement Gap
The advisory identifies a financial dimension that complicates enforcement considerably. MeitY noted that some users were converting Indian rupees into virtual digital assets - specifically USD Coin and similar stablecoins - in order to fund accounts on blocked prediction market platforms. This routing strategy effectively moves the transaction outside the domestic banking system, making it harder for conventional financial monitoring mechanisms to detect or intercept activity.
Offshore platforms have also responded to blocking orders by reappearing through mirror domains - near-identical copies of blocked websites hosted at different addresses. Combined with VPN access, this means a determined user can circumvent a block within minutes of it being imposed. The structural challenge is not unique to India: regulators in the United Kingdom, Australia, and across the European Union have wrestled with the same problem, where the speed of domain replication consistently outpaces the administrative process required to issue new blocking orders.
Survey data cited alongside the advisory illustrates how counterproductive blanket bans can be in the short term. A CUTS International survey conducted in Delhi found that usage of offshore platforms among respondents actually rose after the ban took effect - from 68.3 percent before enforcement to 82 percent after - while daily access increased from 3.4 percent to 42.3 percent. These figures suggest that restriction without accessible legal alternatives can accelerate the migration of users toward precisely the unregulated channels the government is trying to shut down.
The Broader Regulatory Landscape
India's campaign against offshore gambling platforms has been building for several years. Long before the 2025 legislation, individual states used their powers under the Public Gambling Act, 1867, to pursue domestic operators, while the central government applied IT Act blocking orders to foreign-facing platforms. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 represents the first time Parliament has addressed the sector through dedicated national legislation, creating a clearer legal basis for MeitY's enforcement actions but also establishing new compliance expectations for the technology infrastructure that carries internet traffic.
The targeting of VPN providers marks a qualitative shift in strategy. Previous enforcement focused primarily on the platforms themselves - the betting websites and prediction markets. Directing pressure upstream, toward the intermediaries that provide the technical means of access, follows a pattern seen in copyright enforcement and counter-terrorism filtering in other jurisdictions. The practical effect depends entirely on how thoroughly VPN providers respond: those operating servers within India are subject to direct regulatory pressure and data retention mandates under Indian law, while those based entirely offshore face a more ambiguous compliance calculus.
What the advisory does not address - at least in its public form - is the question of consumer-facing legal alternatives. Enforcement that pushes users away from blocked platforms is most durable when those users have somewhere legitimate to go. The 2025 Act creates a framework for licensed online gaming, but the depth and attractiveness of that licensed market will ultimately determine whether enforcement succeeds in redirecting demand or simply displaces it further underground.