India’s latest move against unlicensed gaming platforms did not target a casino or sportsbook. You have hit two of the most popular prediction market platforms in the world. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has issued a ban order against Polymarket, and officials are preparing to take parallel action against Kalshi on Friday, according to a report. Original report From ThePrint. Both platforms continued to accept users from India after the country’s blanket ban on real money online gaming came into effect on May 1.
The crackdown is not an administrative farce. It relies directly on Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, a provision that gives the government the power to direct internet service providers to block access when a website threatens national security or public order. Brokers who do not comply with the decision face up to seven years in prison and heavy financial penalties. The language may seem broad, but its implementation against prediction markets suggests a deliberate expansion of the online gaming ban into a gray area of user-funded information markets.
A legal framework designed for escalation
Earlier this year, India enacted an online gaming law that explicitly prohibits real money games, related advertising, and associated financial transactions. This law already covers traditional casino games and sports betting. Friday’s executive action makes clear that prediction markets — where users invest their capital on the outcomes of events — fall squarely within its scope. Polymarket and Kalshi operate on the premise that predicting markets generates useful information, but under Indian law, the distinction between a research tool and a gambling mechanism collapses once money is in circulation.
Blocking orders force ISPs to restrict access, but they do not automatically shut down platforms themselves. Polymarket and Kalshi are headquartered outside India, and their smart contracts or settlement layers may continue to run on public blockchains. This structural friction is already a familiar headache for regulators elsewhere. In the United States, there is a landmark crypto bill Face the last minute challenge from bankshighlighting how unstable the legal treatment of cryptocurrency-adjacent activity is globally.
A precedent that no one wanted to test
Prediction markets have long occupied a judicial no-go zone. They resemble financial derivatives in their payout structures but attract the same regulatory scrutiny as gaming platforms when they allow direct bets on fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies. India’s decision to name specific platforms—and to act against them almost simultaneously—suggests a coordinated effort rather than an isolated executive pulse. It also sends a message to smaller, less visible operators: the ban is not symbolic.
What makes Kalshi’s work notable is the timing. Calci is a US-regulated futures market, not an offshore entity. The fact that it can still be accessed within India despite its regulated status shows how easily a platform’s local compliance status can become irrelevant the moment it crosses borders. Users within India will likely continue to look for alternative solutions, including virtual private networks (VPNs) and decentralized front-ends, but the legal risks faced by intermediaries that facilitate payments or host mirror sites are now clear.
What remains is unstable
The ban order answers the immediate question of whether India’s ban will extend to prediction markets. It doesn’t solve the harder question of how to apply rules to decentralized versions that lack a single company to block them. Protocols running on smart contracts, where governance is distributed and no legal entity accepts user funds, represent an enforcement puzzle that neither Indian law nor most global regulatory bodies have been able to solve. The coming weeks will test whether the government will go beyond ISP-level bans and target service providers, app stores or financial settlement layers.
Right now, the practical impact is that a large user base is losing easy access to two prominent markets at a time when the volatility of global events is pushing trading volumes higher. Indian retail traders who used Polymarket to express their views on elections, economic data or geopolitics will either have to leave the ecosystem or climb the barriers built by the government. It’s a sudden tightening that few in the forecasting community expected so quickly.
