Centre blocks more than 200 offshore gambling, predatory loan platforms

The blocking orders have been passed under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, following instructions from the Ministry of Home Affairs, it is learnt.

“The Ministry issued orders to block 138 apps that were involved in betting, gambling and money laundering last evening. A separate order to block 94 apps engaged in unauthorised loan services has also been issued,” a senior government official said.

“It is safe to assume that all platforms that were taking advantage in India like Betway have been blocked,” another senior official said.

The Ministry had not made public a complete list of the apps that were blocked. To be sure, such lists are rarely made public since blocking orders passed under Section 69 (A) of the IT Act are typically kept confidential.

At the time of publication, sites of Betway and Dafabet were not operational. Typically, the government issues these orders to telecom service providers and entities running app stores like Apple and Google who then have to comply with them as part of their obligations of being online intermediaries.

Queries sent to MeitY on the blocked apps remained until publication.

The move marks the latest crackdown on offshore betting and gambling platforms in India. Apart from that, it is the first time that the government has ordered to blocked predatory loan apps — a menace that several institutions in the country like the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and local law enforcement agencies have been trying to tackle over incidents of harassment of people who have taken loans through such apps, resulting in people dying by suicide in some instances.

Last year, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had asked streaming platforms like Hotsar to “refrain” from running advertisements of offshore betting platforms, which typically used to place surrogate advertisements during broadcast of prominent sporting events.

Aiming to curb rising malpractices in the digital lending ecosystem, the RBI, last August, issued guidelines for entities engaged in digital lending, with the norms stating that all digital loans must be disbursed and repaid through bank accounts of regulated entities only, without pass-through of lending service providers (LSPs) or other third parties.

Over the last two years, the government has issued directions to block more than 400 apps, including social media, gaming, e-commerce, and photo editing for posing a threat to India’s sovereignty. The list includes apps like TikTok, Garena’s Free Fire, PUBG and Shopee.