The Indian government has recently stepped up its enforcement of laws against internet sites that are operating illegally within the nation. On Monday, Pankaj Chaudhary, the Minister of State for Finance, disclosed that 581 applications—174 of which were related to betting and gambling—had been denied by the government.
Popular websites including Parimatch, Fairplay, 1XBET, Lotus365, Dafabet, and Betwaysatta were among the prohibited platforms. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is now conducting an inquiry into these applications after it was discovered that they were functioning against Indian laws.
Government’s Crackdown on Illicit Operations
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) took this step in accordance with section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha. PUBG and Garena Free Fire, two of the most well-known gaming apps, were among the other 87 loan lending apps that were prohibited.
This action comes after a slew of measures taken against unlicensed gaming applications and betting. After the ED looked into an illicit betting app syndicate, the authorities banned 22 of these applications last month. One of the ED’s initiatives in Chhattisgarh was to raid Mahadev Book.
The authorities had blacklisted 138 websites that offered unlawful gambling and betting earlier in February. Still, a few of these websites were up and running. In response, the government modified the IGST Act and notified it in July, requiring offshore gambling enterprises to register with the Indian government.
It was reported in October that 114 illicit betting and gambling websites using domain farming had been found by the authorities. It was discovered that these sites were using proxy bank accounts to receive payments made through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and were also using hawala, cryptocurrency, and other illegal means to transfer money.
Domestic internet gambling businesses brought this information to the notice of the Revenue Department. The State Minister recently updated parliament, saying that since October 1st, no offshore businesses have registered, suggesting a successful enforcement of regulations.
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