Polymarket's official presence on X has gone dark for users in India. On Thursday, October 22, users inside the country began sharing screenshots of X's standard account-withheld notice on the prediction market's profile, stating that the account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand. Indian users can no longer view the profile or its posts, while outside India the account continues to function normally.
The distinction matters for anyone who follows accounts across borders. A withheld account is not suspended and has not been deleted: X is applying a country-specific restriction, so the same profile that shows a legal-demand notice in India remains fully visible elsewhere. No detailed public statement from India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, known as MeitY, or from Polymarket has explained the precise basis of this latest order.
The move extends a website restriction that is already months old. India's Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, received presidential assent in August 2025, and its rules were notified on April 22, 2026 and took effect on May 1. The law prohibits online money games, described as activities involving stakes or deposits with an expectation of monetary return, whether skill or chance is involved, and it also restricts related advertising and facilitation.
Polymarket was named early. On April 25, 2026, MeitY issued an advisory that specifically listed Polymarket among platforms already blocked under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. The advisory warned VPN providers and other intermediaries against enabling access, and noted that some users were converting rupees into virtual digital assets such as USDC to take part despite the domestic prohibitions.
Internet service providers then implemented DNS-level blocks on polymarket.com around May 21 and 22, 2026, returning sinkhole addresses on major Indian networks. According to the reporting, Polymarket itself had not added India to its own geographic restriction list, even as Indian users had previously traded in significant volumes on markets linked to Indian state elections and cricket.
Enforcement has reached other operators as well. Kalshi later listed India among its restricted jurisdictions, formalizing its exclusion of Indian users. The broader framework establishes a uniform national ban on online money gaming while still permitting e-sports and certain social or educational games under registration and safety rules. Whether courts will eventually distinguish decentralized prediction markets from traditional betting remains untested; current administrative practice treats them as prohibited.
For X users in India, the practical effect is narrower but immediate: a channel many people used to follow market announcements directly has been cut off, on top of the website blocks and intermediary warnings already in place. For users elsewhere, nothing changes, which can make the restriction easy to miss. Anyone who cannot see an account that colleagues abroad can still open may be looking at a withholding, not a suspension, and the notice on the profile is the place to check first.