Gangtok: As the Online Gaming Bill 2025, introduced in Parliament by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, was recently tabled and passed to regulate and curb money-based online gaming, Sikkim has already been acting on the menace for over two years. Officials say the state’s proactive crackdown not only blocked dozens of gambling sites but also influenced the drafting of the new legislation.
Principal Director of the Directorate of State Lotteries, Pawan Awasthy, said that the department began the exercise in December 2023 after receiving reports of mushrooming online gaming sites and a rising number of citizens being lured into betting. “We immediately wrote to the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), and later coordinated with the designated state nodal officer, the DIG CID. With continuous follow-ups, we began reporting the websites through the Sahyog App,” Awasthy explained.
He said that in less than two months of active coordination, Sikkim blocked nearly 90 illegal websites and froze about ₹32 crore linked to five virtual accounts being used for gambling transactions. “The Ministry and the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) themselves acknowledged that Sikkim was one of the few states to take consistent action, which has now contributed to the Online Gaming Bill 2025,” Awasthy added.
DIG CID Tenzing Loden Lepcha confirmed that an FIR was registered against 70 websites under provisions of organised crime and cheating in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the IT Act. He said that most of the illegal gambling domains were registered abroad, with servers based in European countries, making direct action challenging. “We relied on telecom service providers to block access, but new domains kept emerging. That is why we shifted focus to the banking channel, where deposits and withdrawals happen. Through this, we managed to freeze funds,” he said.
According to Lepcha, around 25,000 Sikkim-based users had registered on platforms such as Khelo Bet. “We are still investigating the scale of involvement, including whether government employees are among the users. Gambling addiction is being seen as a serious social problem, and there have already been five suicide cases in the state linked to online betting losses,” he said.
The police have also flagged concerns about similar fraudulent activities such as cryptocurrency-based scams and multi-level marketing schemes, with reported losses of around ₹8–9 lakh in recent months.
Officials said Chief Minister Prem Singh Golay had written a demi-official letter to the Union Home Minister, pressing for central regulation. “The new Online Gaming Bill 2025 incorporates nearly all of the issues Sikkim raised over the past two years. This is a big relief for us,” Awasthy said, adding that the crackdown will continue under state and central coordination.
DIG Lepcha stressed that while games of skill are permitted under Indian law, games of chance remain illegal, and the priority is to protect citizens. “In some South East Asian countries, gambling addiction is treated like drug addiction. We are seeing similar patterns here. This is not just about individual victims, but about the wellbeing of society,” he said.
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