India's Supreme Court, in a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, has fixed a final constitutional hearing on petitions challenging the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (PROGA). The court found the matter requires a three-judge bench and will consolidate the PROGA petitions with the related Gameskraft batch of state-level gaming ban cases. No merits ruling has issued; the case remains at the constitutional hearing stage.
The petitions raise three constitutional questions. First, whether Parliament holds legislative competence to enact PROGA under Entry 34 of the State List (List II, Seventh Schedule), which assigns exclusive authority over betting and gambling to state legislatures. Second, whether PROGA's prohibition on money-staked online games violates Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution and falls outside the permissible restrictions in Article 19(6). Third, whether the Act's immediate compliance mandate is arbitrary under Article 14. The Union of India defends Parliament's authority under Entry 42 of the Union List (lotteries) or Article 248 (residuary legislative power).
Licensed online gaming operators, real-money skill gaming platforms, fantasy sports providers, and payment gateways serving these entities face continued operating uncertainty until the bench issues its ruling. Banks and payment processors have already withdrawn services from several operators pending the outcome. A finding that Parliament lacked competence to enact PROGA would revive state-level gaming regulation where states had permissive laws; a finding upholding PROGA would displace those state laws. Operators holding multi-state licences must monitor both lines of authority concurrently.
The bench confirmed that the PROGA challenge and the Gameskraft batch are intertwined: a competence finding in one will affect the other, and they will be heard and decided together. The Supreme Court's judgment of 27 May 2026 (2026 INSC 594, JJ Pardiwala and Mahadevan) upheld the constitutional validity of GST on real-money online games at 28%, but that ruling addressed taxability and does not resolve the PROGA competence question. The two lines of authority run independently.
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Source: Supreme Court Observer, Challenge to the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025