Why did India block Polymarket?

Because India's new gaming law reclassified it. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 bans online money games — games played for stakes in expectation of winning, skill or chance regardless — and its Rules came into force on 1 May 2026. MeitY's blocking order against polymarket.com followed on 21 May 2026, three weeks later.

Can I get in trouble for betting on Polymarket from India?

The central Act punishes operators, advertisers and payment processors — it creates no offence for players. But gambling is also a state subject, and some states, including Andhra Pradesh, criminalise online real-money play itself. Check your own state's law; this page is not legal advice.

Does Polymarket ban Indian users?

No. As of 19 August 2026, India is absent from every tier of Polymarket's published geoblock list — unlike Australia, the UK, France, Brazil, Russia or the US, which are close-only. The block is entirely on the Indian network side.

Is using a VPN for Polymarket illegal in India?

No law makes VPN use by an individual an offence. MeitY's 25 April 2026 advisory pressured VPN providers by threatening their Section 79 safe harbour, and it named Polymarket — but it created no user-side offence. The practical catch is different: reaching the site does not remove its own onboarding requirements.

Is Polymarket legal in India?

Short answer: polymarket.com is blocked in India, but using it is not a crime under central law. India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued a blocking order against Polymarket, reported as dated 21 May 2026. The ban targets companies that offer, advertise or fund online money games — the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 contains no offence for a person who merely plays.

The block is also one-directional. As of 19 August 2026, India appears nowhere on Polymarket's own geoblock list, while Australia, the UK, France, Brazil and the US are all restricted to close-only. Indian ISPs block the route; Polymarket itself does not turn Indian users away.

This page walks through what the law actually says, what our own network probes measured on Jio and Airtel, the tax picture, and how OVERDOG gives you the same Polymarket markets through a different route. It is not legal or tax advice.

Is Polymarket banned in India?

Yes — at the network level. Press reporting sourced to MeitY dates the blocking order against polymarket.com to 21 May 2026, with a parallel order expected for Kalshi within days. You will not find the order text anywhere, and that is not suspicious: blocking orders under Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 are confidential by rule, under the Blocking Rules of 2009.

The legal basis is new. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (Act 32 of 2025) was gazetted on 22 August 2025, and its Rules came into force on 1 May 2026. Three weeks later, Polymarket went dark on Indian networks. The Act bans what it calls online money games — defined in Section 2(g) as any game played by paying fees, depositing money or other stakes in expectation of winning, whether it runs on skill, chance or both. Stakes include tokens convertible to money, which is exactly what a USDC-settled prediction market uses.

Enforcement sits with a new regulator, the Online Gaming Authority of India, created under Section 8 and run as an attached office of MeitY. The block did not come out of nowhere: on 25 April 2026, MeitY sent an advisory naming Polymarket and warning ISPs and VPN providers that facilitating access could cost them their safe-harbour protection under Section 79 of the IT Act.

Blocking is routine in India rather than exceptional. MeitY issued roughly 24,300 blocking orders in 2025, up from about 6,000 a year before 2024. The template predates prediction markets: in November 2023, MeitY blocked 22 betting apps and sites including Mahadev Book, under the same Section 69A power.

Is it illegal to use Polymarket in India?

Under the central Act — no. Every offence in the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 targets the supply side: offering an online money game, advertising one, or moving money for one. PRS India's penalty table for the Act lists no player offence at all, and law-firm summaries from Ikigai Law and Trilegal say the same thing directly: the prohibition applies to those offering the games, not participants.

The penalties that do exist are heavy, and they aim at companies:

Conduct	Who is liable	Penalty
Offering online money games (s.5, s.9)	Operators	Up to 3 years' imprisonment, fine up to ₹1 crore, or both
Advertising them (s.6, s.9)	Advertisers, promoters	Up to 2 years, fine up to ₹50 lakh, or both
Processing payments for them (s.7, s.9)	Banks, payment facilitators	Up to 3 years, fine up to ₹1 crore, or both
Ignoring a regulator's direction	Operators	Civil penalty up to ₹10 lakh, registration suspended

What about state gambling laws?

This is the honest caveat. Gambling is also a state subject in India, and some state Acts do criminalise the player. Andhra Pradesh amended its Gaming Act in 2020 to remove the game-of-skill exemption and made online real-money gaming a cognizable offence. If you live in a state with such a law, your exposure comes from state legislation, not from the central Act — check your state's position before you stake anything.

One claim you will see on other sites deserves debunking: that players face a ₹10,000 fine under Section 14 for using an unregistered platform. We could not corroborate it in any authoritative source. Section 14 is a power to direct a service provider to cease operations — PRS's penalty table has no player row. Treat the player-fine claim as unverified and probably false.

Does Polymarket work in India right now?

Mostly no — and the reason is the Indian network, not Polymarket. We fetched Polymarket's published geoblock list again on 19 August 2026. India appears in none of its three tiers, while Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Singapore, the UK, the US and four Canadian provinces are all listed close-only. Polymarket will take an Indian user the moment the packets arrive; the Indian state stops the packets.

Our own measurements show how that looks per network. On 18 August 2026 we probed from Indian eyeball networks: on Jio, connections to polymarket.com died at the TCP level on all three attempts, and OONI's public dataset records 325 confirmed blocks of the domain in India. Airtel behaves differently — its block is DNS-shaped, so results depend on which resolver your device uses.

The same probes reached overdog.bet cleanly: HTTP 200 on all four Indian probes, including both Jio tests. One honesty note: that is a measurement of Jio and Airtel on one day, not a promise about BSNL, Vi or your specific connection — and a reachable page is not the same thing as a usable product, which is why we publish the route below rather than a screenshot of a status code.

How to trade Polymarket markets from India

You do not need to reach polymarket.com to trade its markets. OVERDOG is an access layer: the markets, prices and settlement are Polymarket's, and your orders travel through our gateway — so the venue sees our infrastructure, not your Indian IP. No VPN is involved in that route.

Here is the whole flow:

Open overdog.bet — it answered on every Indian network we probed, including Jio, where polymarket.com fails.
Sign in with Telegram or Google. There is no document upload and no identity verification to place a bet.
Deposit a supported crypto such as USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, SOL or BNB. It is converted to Polymarket's US-dollar stable unit on Polygon.
Pick a market — cricket, football, esports and every other sports market Polymarket lists — and place your order at the exchange price.
Withdraw back to crypto whenever you want. You can export your wallet at any time; we cannot freeze you.

Open the markets

What about VPNs?

The 25 April 2026 advisory pressured VPN providers, not VPN users — MeitY warned providers they could lose Section 79 safe harbour for facilitating access to blocked betting platforms, and it named Polymarket. No user offence was created, and the Supreme Court's Shreya Singhal ruling holds that safe harbour is lost on a court order or a valid Section 69A notification, not on an informal advisory. Still, a VPN gets you to a site that will ask for KYC documents Polymarket's US-regulated stack requires elsewhere, while the OVERDOG route needs none.

Is there a Polymarket app in India?

Not through any store you should trust. After the block, Polymarket's app is not a realistic path for Indian users, and the gap has been filled by exactly what you would expect: sideloaded APK files and lookalike domains built on exact-match names. Some of the sites ranking for Polymarket India searches are anonymous doorway domains registered weeks ago. Do not give a seed phrase or a deposit to an APK you found through a search result.

OVERDOG runs in the browser and inside Telegram as a mini app — there is nothing to sideload, and the domain you type is the domain that holds your account.

Tax on prediction-market winnings in India

India taxes online-game winnings hard, and the rules are newer than most guides admit. Section 115BBJ of the Income-tax Act, added by the Finance Act 2023 and effective from assessment year 2024-25, taxes net winnings from online games at a flat 30%, regardless of your slab and regardless of skill or chance. Section 194BA adds 30% TDS on net winnings with no minimum threshold.

Two honest qualifications. First, no authority has applied Section 115BBJ to a prediction market by name — the definition of online game is broad enough to plausibly cover one, but that reading is interpretation, not settled law. Second, TDS is deducted by the person responsible for paying — an offshore venue with no Indian presence deducts nothing, which means nothing is withheld for you and self-reporting is your responsibility. The 28% GST you may have read about is a levy on suppliers of online money gaming, not a tax you file as a player. Talk to a tax professional before you rely on any of this.

Betting on Polymarket markets with OVERDOG

OVERDOG is an access layer to the Polymarket exchange, not a bookmaker that sets its own lines. Prices come from a real exchange order book set by traders, so there is no bookmaker margin baked in — that is what no-vig means: a description of the price, never a promise about any result. Because there is no house position against you, winning consistently never gets your account limited or closed.

The costs are disclosed together and up front: a flat 1% OVERDOG fee plus Polymarket's own fees. Settlement is on-chain — a winning share redeems for one dollar on Polygon, and you can verify it yourself. There are no bonuses, free bets or deposit matches here and there never will be. Betting is entertainment, not income; stake only what you can afford to lose.