India Blocks Polymarket Under New Online Gaming Act; Kalshi Order Reportedly Imminent
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has ordered ISPs to cut access to Polymarket, classifying event contracts as "online money gaming" under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025. A similar order targeting Kalshi is reportedly being prepared.
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has issued a blocking order directing Indian internet service providers to cut access to Polymarket, and local media reports cite an anonymous MeitY source saying a parallel order for Kalshi could be issued as soon as this Friday. Polymarket is currently inaccessible to Indian users; Kalshi remains reachable as of publication. The action is the first major sovereign blocking of CFTC-regulated event-contract platforms outside the United States and represents a substantively different regulatory model from the state-level felony statute Minnesota signed earlier this week.
India's legal hook is the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025, which carves the online-gaming space into three categories: e-sports, social gaming, and "online money gaming." The last category is prohibited entirely, and MeitY has classified prediction-market activity as falling squarely inside it. The blocking order appears to flow from an April 25, 2026 MeitY advisory to VPN providers and consumer-internet platforms warning against facilitating access to prohibited gaming services. The Act's text gives MeitY broad executive authority to direct ISP-level blocks without requiring case-by-case judicial review, which is why the Polymarket block could be imposed quickly and why the Kalshi order can follow on a comparable timeline.
The Indian regulatory posture is not isolated. India already applies a 30% capital-gains rate on crypto-asset disposals and a 1% TDS (tax deducted at source) on every crypto transaction, an effective shadow-ban that has hollowed out domestic crypto trading volume since 2022. The same regulatory instinct (strict capital controls plus restrictive interpretation of digital-asset and gaming statutes) drives the prediction-market block. From Polymarket's perspective the loss is meaningful: India was one of the platform's fastest-growing international markets through 2025, and the QCEX-licensed US relaunch was supposed to compensate for any future international constraint, not for a constraint imposed at exactly the same time as the US ramp-up.
Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi has issued a public statement on the India action. Both companies have legal counsel reviewing whether the blocking order can be challenged in Indian court on administrative-law or constitutional grounds, but the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025 is a recent, broadly written statute that the Indian government has shown willingness to enforce aggressively. The more realistic short-term path is engagement with MeitY on a possible exemption framework for CFTC-licensed exchanges, modeled on India's existing carve-outs for licensed brokerage of foreign securities. That path requires the platforms to argue that event contracts are commodity derivatives (a financial instrument) rather than gambling, which is the same argument they are making against US state attorneys general but with the burden of proof reversed under Indian administrative law.
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Recent updates
Utah Files Felony Charges Against Kalshi and Its Founders — Second State to Criminally Charge a Platform
Utah filed criminal charges against Kalshi and its two co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, on October 28 — 13 felonies and a misdemeanor, including a second-degree 'pattern of unlawful criminal activity' count and 12 counts of online gambling promotion. The charges stem from a September sting in which an undercover agent placed 12 sports wagers verified to be in Utah. The CFTC sued Utah the day before to block state enforcement, its tenth such suit. Utah is the second state after Arizona to criminally charge Kalshi, and the first to charge the founders personally. Kalshi called it a 'crazy overreach.'
NBA Names Kalshi and Polymarket Preferred Exchanges — Leaving the NFL Alone in Opposition
The NBA announced on October 26 that it has named Kalshi and Polymarket its 'preferred prediction market exchanges,' signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the CFTC on basketball integrity, and expanded its DraftKings deal to include prediction markets — the first league to extend a sportsbook partnership into the category. The exchange deals bar league and team personnel from trading NBA contracts, limit permissible markets, and require sharing of suspicious-trading data, in exchange for NBA intellectual property and official data. The NBA joins MLB, the NHL, and MLS as partnered leagues, leaving the NFL as the lone major holdout — and the only league fighting the platforms in court.
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CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said on October 23 that the agency is closely monitoring prediction markets for manipulation ahead of the November 3 midterms, and that it is separately scrutinizing oil market trading tied to President Trump's announcements about the war in Iran. Combined midterm open interest on Kalshi and Polymarket stood at $250 million as of October 18, with Kalshi holding 84%. Selig acknowledged the agency often catches political figures attempting to trade 'oftentimes after the fact.' The remarks highlight the CFTC's dual and somewhat conflicting role as both the platforms' federal protector and their manipulation watchdog, at a time when the agency has shed enforcement staff.