Is satta matka legal in India?

People want one word: legal, or illegal. The opened texts refuse that word. The penalties they do set are in the table. Ask a lawyer about your own conduct. Nothing here is that advice.

The 1867 Act is not a modern national code

The India Code copy is Act No. 3 of 1867, dated 25 January 1867. The preamble names the United Provinces, East Punjab, Delhi and the Central Provinces. A footnote lists later extensions, including Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. That is a warning against treating one penalty figure as the rule in every district.

Section 1 defines a common gaming-house as a place where instruments of gaming are kept for someone's profit. Section 2 lets a State Government extend most other sections to a city, town or railway station by a notification in three successive Gazette issues. Section 3, in the opened copy, is a fine not exceeding two hundred rupees or imprisonment not exceeding three months for the keeper. Section 4 is a fine not exceeding one hundred rupees or imprisonment not exceeding one month for a person found gaming there. The 15 October 2018 Express article calls this Act the reason the game is illegal and offers its own penalty summary. This page does not repeat that summary, because it does not match sections 3 and 4. Check whether a later state law has replaced them where you are.

A state subject, said carefully

The Legislative Department PDF includes Article 246, which splits law-making across the Union List, the State List and the Concurrent List in the Seventh Schedule. The item-by-item State List text did not extract, so this page does not quote an entry number. The 2018 Express caption says gambling has constitutionally been a state subject. That is the paper's caption. It is a reason to read the current state Act, not a reason to invent its sections.

State Acts differ. Maharashtra's sections 4 and 5 are in the table, and the Maharashtra guide quotes the 2019 print. Other state Acts were not opened. The Mahadev case guide is a news explainer, not a penalty table.

The 2025 Act, including what is not yet claimed

The gazette copy is the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, Gazette of India Extraordinary, Part II, Section 1, No. 37, New Delhi, 22 August 2025. Section 1(2) extends it to the whole of India and to a service offered in India or operated from outside. Section 1(3) says it begins on a date notified in the Official Gazette. That notice was opened on 9 November 2026. It is S.O. 1994(E), New Delhi, 22 Apr 2026, and it appoints 1 May 2026. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, G.S.R. 303(E), of the same day, come into force on 1 May 2026. The Act explainer stays with those notices.

Section 2(g) covers an online game of skill, chance, or both when the user pays fees or stakes in expectation of monetary enrichment, and it excludes e-sports. The ban does not wait on a skill argument. Sections 5, 6 and 7 prohibit offering the game, advertising it, and helping the payment. Section 9 is the penalty section: up to three years or one crore rupees, or both, for offering contrary to section 5, and up to two years or fifty lakh rupees for an advertisement contrary to section 6. A repeat conviction is punished more heavily. Section 10 makes offences under sections 5 and 7 cognizable and non-bailable. Section 14 allows blocking under the Information Technology Act's section 69A procedure. Section 18 says this Act is in addition to other law and overrides it where they clash.

Those sentences are about online money games as the Act defines them. They are not a finding that a particular street draw, a particular website, or a particular reader is guilty of an offence. On 8 Sep 2025 the Supreme Court transferred High Court challenges to itself. On 5 Aug 2026 it posted that batch, including T.C.(C) No. 133/2025, Head Digital Works against the Union of India, for final hearing on 6 and 7 Oct 2026, and it did not stay the Act. No later order was found on 9 Nov 2026. The case-status guide sets out those orders. Guilt is still for a court. This site does not offer a game, take a stake, or advertise a number to play. The editorial guide says what the desk does instead.

A skill case that is not a matka case

State of Andhra Pradesh v. K. Satyanarayana was decided on 22 November 1967 and is reported as 1968 AIR 825. The Court said rummy is mainly and preponderantly a game of skill, unlike the three-card game, because the fall of the cards has to be remembered and the hand has to be built. The case was a rummy club under the Hyderabad Gambling Act. Using that sentence to license or ban matka would misuse the judgment. A published matka number is not a hand of rummy.

The history guide stays with two newspaper accounts of how the game was described, and it points back here whenever those accounts call the game illegal. The pros and cons treats legal risk as one of the costs, without turning that cost into a verdict.