This post explains one part of the legal picture set out in our main guide, Is Satta King legal in India?. If you have searched सट्टा वेबसाइट ब्लॉक क्यों (why are satta websites blocked), the answer is a blocking power that the central government has used thousands of times since 2022. Below is how it works, and every official count we could find, each with its own date.
The legal power
- IT Act, section 69A. The central government can direct that public access to online information be blocked in the interests of sovereignty, security, public order and similar grounds, with the reasons recorded in writing. The Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 set out how.
- Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (24 March 2015). The Supreme Court upheld section 69A and the 2009 Blocking Rules as constitutional.
- Tax officers too. The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) is empowered under the IT Act and the IGST Act to direct blocking of unregistered, including offshore, online money gaming platforms (PIB, 26 Mar 2025).
- Online Gaming Act 2025, section 14. Where the bans on offering, advertising or paying for online money games are broken, "any information generated, transmitted, received or hosted in any computer resource in relation to online money gaming service" can be blocked using the section 69A procedure. The Act came into force on 1 May 2026; our Online Gaming Act explainer covers it in full.
- Hosts and platforms. Under rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules, 2021, intermediaries must make reasonable efforts to stop users hosting content that relates to or encourages gambling, and must take it down once they have actual knowledge of it.
Blocking orders are usually not published, so the public record is mostly made up of ministry statements and answers in Parliament.
Blocking waves, with dates
| Date | What was reported | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5–6 Feb 2023 | 138 betting and gambling apps (plus 94 loan apps, 232 in all) blocked on a Home Ministry recommendation. Reports differ on whether section 69 or 69A was used. | PTI via The Tribune |
| 5 Nov 2023 | 22 illegal betting apps and websites, including Mahadev Book, blocked under section 69A at the ED's request | PIB |
| 2022–25 (as of Mar 2025) | 1,410 blocking directions against betting, gambling and gaming websites and apps | PIB, Lok Sabha reply |
| 2022 to Jun 2025 | 1,524 sites and apps blocked | PIB backgrounder, Aug 2025 |
| Jan 2026 | 242 more links blocked; cumulative total "over 7,800" | Storyboard18, 19 Jan 2026 |
| 20 Mar 2026 | About 300 more sites and apps blocked; about 8,400 in total, of which about 4,900 came after the Online Gaming Act was passed | News On AIR |
| 28 Mar 2026 | 8,376 URLs blocked or actioned | Lok Sabha unstarred reply, 1 Apr 2026, via MediaNama |
These figures come from different reports and count different things: apps, "directions", "links", "sites and apps" or "URLs". Some are totals and some are single waves. They should not be added together.
"Satta and matka networks" named in March 2026
The 20 March 2026 announcement was the first in our list to name satta directly. It said "action has also been taken against satta and matka gambling networks". It gave no separate count for them, and we found no official figure for how many satta or matka sites, or results sites, have been blocked.
Why blocked sites reappear
- Mirror domains. A blocked site often comes back at a new address with the same content. The ED described one offshore platform that used mirror websites and "dynamically generated UPI IDs linked to mule bank accounts" (ED, 2 Mar 2026).
- VPNs. Blocking works at the level of Indian internet providers, so users can route around it.
- A survey, with limits. A CUTS International survey reported that offshore use rose from 68.3% to 82% after the ban. It was a self-reported survey of 1,000 former real-money gaming users in Delhi NCR in December 2025. It does not measure traffic.
We do not advise anyone to evade a block. This site does not run mirror domains and will not.
What a block means for users
A blocked site simply stops loading on Indian networks. For anyone who had money on a blocked betting app or site, that money is usually out of reach: such platforms operate outside Indian law, and the payment ban in the 2025 Act means no bank should be processing them. If you lost money to an app or site, report it on 1930 or at cybercrime.gov.in; our post on fake satta apps lists the steps. Anyone selling numbers "before the result" is running a scam, as our guide to so-called leak and fix numbers explains.