The 50-word version
When PROGA banned online money games in August 2025, Dream11, MPL, RummyCircle, My11Circle, PokerBaazi, Zupee, WinZO and Gameskraft killed their cash products but kept withdrawals open. Your balance is recoverable — but through each operator’s voluntary wind-down plus existing consumer/RBI law, not a statutory deadline. The draft Rules’ ~180-day refund window was dropped from the final notified Rules. Expect a 30% TDS cut.
This page is a sourced reference, not legal advice. Every date and figure below is cited to a named source — government notification, law firm, or news report. It explains how the post-PROGA wind-down worked app by app, why there is no statutory refund window (the draft provision was cut from the final Rules), and how an ordinary player gets a stranded balance out using existing law and the operator’s own process. It is not written by a lawyer, and it does not tell you what to do in court. For a decision that carries legal consequences, consult a qualified advocate.
Why you are probably here. A fantasy or rummy or poker app you used suddenly stopped taking deposits in late August 2025, and you still have money sitting in the wallet. That money is yours. The cash games are gone, a new deposit is now the operator’s crime, but withdrawals were kept open so users could recover existing balances. One thing to fix in your head before you read on: there is no legally-mandated 180-day refund window — the draft 2026 Rules contained one (often cited as Rule 24), but it was dropped from the final notified Rules on the basis that existing law already covers the matter (Mondaq; iGaming Business). So recovery rests on the operator’s voluntary wind-down, your existing consumer and RBI/NPCI rights, and the PROGA grievance ladder — which means act fast, because nothing legal forces a deadline. The mechanics of getting it out — KYC, the payment rail, the dispute ladder — are in our 3 Patti withdrawal guide, and the law that caused all of this is unpacked in our PROGA Act 2025 explainer.
What actually happened in August 2025
For most of the decade before 2025, India’s real-money gaming apps were a fixture of daily life. Dream11 alone had over 220 million registered users by early 2025, and during IPL season it ran more than 50 million daily active users, per reporting compiled by The Cricket Panda. Then, in the space of a single week, almost all of it went dark.
The trigger was the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 — almost always shortened to PROGA. Parliament passed it at extraordinary speed: the Union Cabinet cleared the bill on 19 August 2025, the Lok Sabha passed it on 20 August, the Rajya Sabha passed it on 21 August, and President Droupadi Murmu signed it into law on 22 August 2025. Four calendar days from Cabinet to Act. The full legislative chronology, the three-category framework, and the criminal penalties are laid out in our PROGA Act 2025 explainer; this page assumes the ban and focuses on one thing — getting your money back.
The defining move in PROGA is a single phrase. It bans an online money game “irrespective of whether the game is based on skill, chance, or both,” in the language tracked by PRS Legislative Research. That phrase ended a twenty-year courtroom argument in one sentence. For two decades, rummy, fantasy sports and poker had been defended — often successfully — as games of skill, which were usually legal, as opposed to games of chance, which usually were not. PROGA threw that distinction out for online money games. So rummy, fantasy and poker were banned alongside the pure-luck games they used to be distinguished from.
Within hours of the Rajya Sabha vote on 21 August 2025, the major operators began suspending cash play. The pattern was consistent across every name, and it is the single most important fact for anyone with a stranded balance: deposits off, withdrawals on, products gone. Reporting by MediaNama and others documented the wave as it happened, hour by hour. The companies did not freeze your money on the way out. They froze your ability to add more of it.
The one-line summary of what changed: PROGA killed the game and closed the deposit door in August 2025, but the operators kept the withdrawal door open. Note what the law did not do — the draft Rules’ ~180-day statutory refund window was dropped from the final notified Rules, so there is no legal deadline forcing a payout. Your balance is a recovery problem, not a loss. A recovery problem with no legal safety net, which is exactly why acting fast matters and why this page exists.
Who is liable, and who is not — read this before you panic
A point that sends many players into needless fear: PROGA’s criminal offences target operators, advertisers and money-movers — not the individual player. As the law firm GaganLegal reads the framework, “the framework targets operators and intermediaries, not individual players,” and “no criminal liability attaches to player participation itself under the Act” (GaganLegal).
You will not be arrested for having played fantasy cricket or cash rummy. The company that offered the game, the celebrity who advertised it, and the payment intermediary that moved the money are the ones facing jail terms — up to three years for offering or for facilitating funds, up to two years for advertising. The three-year sentences in PROGA land on the business, not on you. There were zero player-facing prison terms written into the Act’s offence provisions.
This matters for recovery in a direct way. Some players left their balance untouched out of a vague worry that “claiming gambling money now” might be illegal. It is not. Withdrawing your existing balance is not a banned transaction — the operators that wound down kept withdrawals open precisely so users could recover what they were owed. Leaving the money sitting because you are scared is the one mistake that actually costs you. And because the final Rules contain no statutory refund deadline (the draft’s window was dropped), the only clock that matters is the practical one: a winding-down operator’s support and systems thin out over time, so the longer you wait, the harder recovery gets.
Why this happened: the tax shock that preceded the ban
You do not need the full back-story to recover your balance, but a short version explains why the apps were already financially fragile when PROGA hit — which is directly relevant to how aggressively they are now clearing wallets and shedding staff.
The turning point before the ban was tax. In 2023, the GST Council decided that online money gaming would attract 28% GST on the full face value of deposits — not on the operator’s slim margin, but on the entire amount a player put in — with the change taking effect from 1 October 2023. For a platform that charged, say, a 10% fee, the effective tax burden jumped from roughly 1.8% (18% GST on the 10% fee) to 28% of the whole deposit, a near-15x increase in effective tax rate, per the tax commentary. That single change compressed the sector’s economics hard and signalled that the state had started to view real-money gaming as something closer to gambling than to a normal digital service.
Running alongside the GST shock was the 30% TDS on net winnings under Section 194BA, in force since 1 April 2023 with no minimum threshold. Together, the two taxes reframed the entire sector’s standing in the government’s eyes and sit directly upstream of the 2025 decision to prohibit. The industry had been contributing an estimated ₹20,000 crore a year to the exchequer, much of it from the real-money segment now banned — which is the awkward fact at the centre of the whole policy: the activity the government decided was socially harmful was also a sizeable tax source.
Why this matters to you, concretely: the operators winding down in 2025–26 were not flush, financially comfortable companies taking a leisurely exit. They were a sector already squeezed by the 28% GST, now suddenly stripped of its core product, writing down crores and cutting staff. Gameskraft reportedly cut headcount sharply; MPL and PokerBaazi ran significant layoffs. A company in that state has thinner wind-down support and a fast-shrinking team handling balance recovery — which is the practical argument for recovering your balance early. And it is a stronger argument now than it would have been under the draft Rules, because the statutory ~180-day refund window was dropped from the final notified Rules: there is no legal deadline to fall back on, so the only thing protecting your balance is the operator’s still-functioning (but shrinking) voluntary recovery flow. The fuller history of the tax fight, the 28% GST, and how it fed into the ban is in our PROGA Act 2025 explainer, and the tax mechanics for your payout are in TDS on online gaming.
The pre-history, condensed: the 28% GST on full deposits (from 1 October 2023) and 30% TDS (from 1 April 2023) had already squeezed the sector before PROGA banned it. So the operators clearing your balance are financially stressed and shedding staff — another reason to claim early, especially since the final Rules give you no statutory refund deadline to rely on and the voluntary wind-down support only thins out over time.
The draft “Rule 24” 180-day refund window — and why it is NOT law
This is the single most important correction in the whole refund story, because almost every article you will read online gets it wrong. There is a widely-repeated claim that a 180-day statutory refund window protects your balance. It does not exist in the final law. Here is what actually happened.
When MeitY released the draft Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules in October 2025, the draft included a specific provision — widely cited as Rule 24 — dealing with what happens to the money already sitting in user wallets when a banned operator winds down. In plain terms, the draft provision would have created a safe harbour: repaying user balances, deposits and winnings owed before the ban took effect would not be treated as facilitating a prohibited money game, provided it happened within a defined window — reported as roughly 180 days from the Act’s enforcement. As Storyboard18 reported at the time, industry representatives summarised the draft directly: “The draft rules explicitly allow a 180-day repayment period once the Act is in force.”
But that provision did not survive into the final notified Rules. When MeitY notified the Rules in the Gazette on 22 April 2026 (in force 1 May 2026), the user-fund refund provisions were cut — on the stated basis that existing law already covers the matter (Mondaq; iGaming Business; PIB press release). The draft’s separate “Grievance Appellate Committee” was also dropped. So the bottom line you must carry through the rest of this page is blunt: there is no statutory 180-day refund safe-harbour, and no legal deadline by which an operator must repay you.
So what actually protects your balance?
If the special refund rule was cut, what is left? Exactly what the government said it relied on: existing law. Three things, working together:
- Consumer-protection law. A real operator that holds a clean, owed balance and refuses to return it is committing a deficiency in service — the standard consumer-law claim, enforceable through the National Consumer Helpline and the consumer commissions.
- RBI / NPCI payment rules and contract. Once a payout is on the rail (UPI/IMPS), it is governed by the RBI’s failed-transaction rules — auto-reversal, the ₹100/day compensation, and the RBI Ombudsman — none of which depend on PROGA at all. Your wallet balance is also a contractual liability the operator owes you.
- The PROGA grievance ladder. The final Rules do build a grievance mechanism: you complain to the operator first, escalate to the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI) within 30 days of non-resolution, and a still-dissatisfied user can appeal to the Secretary, MeitY. (Note this ladder is built mainly for the permitted categories — e-sports and social games — so its fit for a banned money game’s stranded balance is imperfect.)
In practice, the operators that wound down kept withdrawals open voluntarily so users could recover existing balances (per the reset analysis). That voluntary process — not a statutory window — is the main route your money comes back. The rest of this page treats recovery on exactly that footing: act through the operator’s own flow, and fall back on existing consumer and RBI law if it stalls.
Why “no statutory window” makes the timing more urgent, not less
It is tempting to read “the deadline was dropped” as good news — as if you now have unlimited time. The opposite is true. A statutory window would at least have guaranteed a protected period. Without one, your balance sits inside a voluntary wind-down run by a financially-stressed, staff-shedding company, with no law forcing it to pay you by any date. There is no legal backstop to catch a balance you leave too long. So treat recovery as time-sensitive precisely because the safety net is gone.
One piece of context about why the refund question was so fraught. The apps shut in August 2025, but the formal Rules only became operative on 1 May 2026. That eight-month gap created a genuine compliance vacuum in which operators were unsure whether proactively refunding balances would itself trigger regulatory action — which is exactly why, in late 2025, the Enforcement Directorate raided several firms and froze user funds, and why the industry pushed back hard, asking for the very refund safe-harbour that the final Rules ultimately declined to enact.
The ED raids and the “refund mandate” fight
In late 2025, before the Rules were notified, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) ran coordinated searches against gaming firms and froze large sums — and a chunk of what was frozen was user money. Per Storyboard18, the ED targeted WinZO Games, Nirdesa Networks (Pocket52) and Gameskraft, freezing roughly ₹505 crore of WinZO’s bank balances, fixed deposits, bonds and mutual funds under the PMLA, plus eight escrow accounts totalling ₹18.57 crore across NNPL and Gameskraft. Notably, the action flagged around ₹43 crore of WinZO user funds allegedly held after the 22 August 2025 ban.
The firms’ core complaint went to the heart of the refund-timing question. They argued that the Act “has not yet been notified,” and that “if the Act hasn’t even [come into force], it raises serious questions about whether non-refund of balances right now can be treated as wrongdoing” (Storyboard18). In other words: you cannot punish us for not refunding under a rule that hasn’t been enacted yet.
For an ordinary player, the takeaway from this fight is mixed. On the reassuring side: the dispute was never about whether you are entitled to your balance — both sides agreed you are. It was a corporate-and-regulator argument about timing and process during a vacuum. On the sobering side: when the final Rules arrived on 1 May 2026, the government did not enact the special refund safe-harbour the industry had been asking for. It dropped that provision, leaving the refund question to existing law (Mondaq). So the legal basis for getting your balance back is the ordinary one — contract, consumer protection, the RBI payment rules — not a bespoke gaming-refund window. Your money is still recoverable; it is just recoverable the same way any other owed-but-withheld balance is.
The refund-window myth in one breath: the draft 2026 Rules proposed a ~180-day safe harbour for repaying pre-ban balances, but the final notified Rules dropped it, on the basis that existing law already covers the matter. So there is no statutory refund window and no legal deadline — your balance comes back through the operator’s voluntary wind-down flow plus your existing consumer and RBI/NPCI rights. Recover it promptly, because nothing in the law forces a timeline and the voluntary support only shrinks.
The financial-facilitation offence — and why no refund carve-out survived
To understand the refund question properly, you have to see the trap that the draft rule was meant to defuse — and why the government decided it did not need a special rule to do so. PROGA does not just ban the games; it criminalises three separate activities, and one of them is the financial-facilitation offence. Anyone who “engages in, or authorises, a financial transaction” connected to an online money game faces imprisonment of up to 3 years, a fine of up to ₹1 crore, or both, per the offence structure tracked by PRS Legislative Research. That provision is deliberately broad, because its whole job is to choke off deposit flows by making it illegal for any Indian payment rail to fund a banned game.
Now read that offence against a wind-down. A bank processing a refund of your wallet balance could, on a literal reading, look like “engaging in a financial transaction connected to” the banned game. That apparent tension is exactly why the draft Rules proposed an explicit refund safe-harbour — a carve-out saying that repaying a pre-ban balance is not the kind of facilitation the offence punishes. It is also the paralysis the Enforcement Directorate action exposed in late 2025, when firms argued they could not safely refund without that protection switched on.
Here is the crucial point: the final Rules declined to enact that carve-out. The government’s stated position, as reported, is that existing law already covers the matter — a refund of a player’s own pre-ban balance is a return of money owed, conceptually distinct from facilitating new play, and the consumer, contract and payment-law framework already handles owed-but-withheld funds (Mondaq; iGaming Business). So rather than create a bespoke 180-day window, the Rules leave the refund to be characterised as a wind-down repayment under ordinary law. The practical effect for you is the same destination — your balance is recoverable — but by a different and un-deadlined route.
This is also why you should not anchor on a date. There is no statutory clock counting down to a “refund expiry,” because the clock was never enacted. What governs your recovery instead is ordinary law plus the operator’s voluntary process — neither of which gives you a guaranteed protected period. The honest framing on this whole page is therefore: recover promptly, not because a window is closing, but because no window was ever opened to protect a late claim.
Why there is no deadline, in one line: PROGA’s financial-facilitation offence (up to 3 years, ₹1 crore) created an apparent tension with refunds, so the draft Rules proposed a ~180-day refund carve-out — but the final Rules dropped it, concluding existing consumer, contract and payment law already covers returning a player’s own balance. So the protection you actually have is ordinary law, with no statutory clock.
The scale of the problem: how much player money is stranded
It helps to grasp how large this is, because it tells you that you are not chasing a rounding error and that the operators have strong reasons to clear balances cleanly. Before the ban, the Indian online-gaming sector was valued at roughly ₹35,000 crore (2024), of which real-money gaming made up about 85–86% of revenue — the cash games were the business. India is the world’s second-largest gaming market by users, with hundreds of millions of players, so the wind-down touched an enormous base of ordinary wallets, not a niche.
The user numbers on individual apps make the point. Dream11 alone carried over 220 million registered users and more than 50 million daily actives at IPL peak. Across the whole sector, tens of millions of people held some balance — winnings, deposits, or bonus credits — at the moment deposits were switched off on 22 August 2025. Even a modest average balance, multiplied across that base, is a very large pool of stranded money sitting in wind-down wallets.
The ED action gives a concrete sense of the per-firm scale. The action flagged roughly ₹43 crore of WinZO user funds allegedly held after the ban, and froze around ₹505 crore of WinZO’s own assets plus ₹18.57 crore in escrow across Pocket52 and Gameskraft (Storyboard18). Those are single-firm snapshots; the sector-wide pool of unreturned player money runs to many multiples of that.
Two practical conclusions follow for you. First, your balance is part of a known, accounted-for liability on these operators’ books — it is not “lost” money, it is a payable the company owes you under ordinary contract and consumer law (there is no special statutory refund rule, but a recognised debt is a recognised debt). Second, precisely because the pool is so large and the support teams are shrinking, the operators are processing a flood of withdrawals with thinning staff. That is the structural reason a clean, complete, KYC-matched first request clears faster than a messy one — you are one of millions in a queue, and the queue rewards requests that do not need a second look.
The scale, condensed: real-money gaming was 85–86% of a ~₹35,000-crore sector with hundreds of millions of users; tens of millions held a balance when deposits stopped on 22 August 2025, and a single firm’s user funds flagged in the ED action ran to ~₹43 crore. Your balance is a recognised payable, not lost money — but it sits in a huge queue handled by a shrinking team, so a clean request wins.
App-by-app wind-down timeline: who stopped what, and when
The shutdown was simultaneous but not identical. Each operator handled the August 2025 wind-down slightly differently, and a year later they sit in varied states — some pivoted to free-to-play, some went quiet, some kept a stripped-down withdrawal flow. Below is the dated, app-by-app picture, framed entirely around recovery, not play. None of this is a recommendation to use any of these apps; the cash products are illegal. It is purely a map for getting an old balance out.
Dream11 (fantasy sports)
Dream11 — the largest name in the sector, valued around $8 billion — moved first and fastest. On 22 August 2025, it permanently ended all real-money contests across India and transitioned completely to a free-to-play social-gaming format, per The Cricket Panda’s timeline. Today you can still build fantasy teams and join contests on Dream11, but you cannot enter cash contests or win real-money prizes; the platform exists as a free social game.
For your balance, this is straightforward in principle: Dream11 publicly assured users that their account balance is safe and available for withdrawal, and it kept the withdrawal facility open while shutting the “pay-to-play” side. Treat any remaining Dream11 balance as a withdrawal-only recovery — complete KYC if prompted, request the payout to a bank account or UPI ID in your own name that matches your PAN, and expect a 30% TDS deduction on net winnings. One caution from the reporting: there has been ambiguity about unclaimed funds — Dream11 did not spell out in detail what happens to balances nobody claims, and at least one report quoted in-app messaging urging users to “withdraw your balance before the deadline.” Note that any such “deadline” is the operator’s own, not a statutory one — the final Rules contain no refund deadline. Read it as a reason to act on the operator’s voluntary flow promptly, not to delay.
MPL — Mobile Premier League (mixed real-money)
MPL, valued around $2.5 billion, suspended all cash gaming and stopped accepting new deposits, while explicitly continuing to let existing users withdraw balances. Its user messaging was among the clearest of the group: new deposits will not be accepted, but you can withdraw your balance “without hassle.” MPL was also hit hard on the jobs side — reporting noted significant layoffs across MPL and PokerBaazi after the ban. Recovery posture: withdraw the existing balance through the remaining channel, KYC-clean, own-name account, expect TDS; do not attempt to re-deposit.
RummyCircle and My11Circle — Games24x7 (rummy and fantasy)
Games24x7 operates both RummyCircle (real-money rummy) and My11Circle (fantasy). It stopped accepting deposits on its platforms in the August 2025 wave, and users could no longer access the real-money games. Withdrawals stayed open.
My11Circle’s own support documentation is unusually useful here, because it spells out the withdrawal mechanics. The platform tells users that to withdraw, your KYC and PAN must be verified and your bank account validated — go to the My Account page and click Cash Withdrawal (My11Circle support). The same support hub addresses what happens to a balance at the end of the financial year, which is relevant because of how TDS is timed (more on that below). Two recurring snags carried over from how these apps always worked: your PAN must match your KYC exactly (one transposed letter parks the payout), and the platform historically enforced KYC at the first withdrawal. Get KYC clean first, then request the payout.
PokerBaazi and Pocket52 (poker)
PokerBaazi — backed by Nazara’s Moonshine Technologies — announced it would pause operations in compliance with the bill, with no real-money games offered effective immediately (Business Standard). Crucially for players, PokerBaazi stated that user funds remain completely safe and will be accessible for withdrawals (The Week). Pocket52 (Nirdesa Networks) was among the firms whose escrow accounts were later caught in the ED action, which is a reminder to claim sooner rather than later. Recovery posture is the same poker-app standard: KYC-clean, own-name account, expect TDS, dispute on the rail if it stalls.
Zupee (casual real-money)
Zupee discontinued all paid games, while keeping its free titles — Ludo Supreme, Ludo Turbo, Snakes & Ladders, Trump Card Mania — live as free-to-play (Social Samosa). So Zupee, like Dream11, survives as a free social game with its cash layer removed. Recover any paid-game balance through the remaining withdrawal channel.
WinZO (mixed real-money)
WinZO decided to withdraw all real-money gaming offerings effective 22 August 2025 (Deccan Herald). WinZO was also the firm hit hardest by the ED action — roughly ₹505 crore of its assets frozen and about ₹43 crore of user funds flagged. That makes WinZO the clearest example of why the refund question was so fraught: user money got caught in an enforcement freeze during the compliance vacuum, and an orderly statutory refund mechanism is exactly what the industry asked for — and exactly what the final Rules ultimately declined to provide, leaving such trapped balances to be sorted out under existing law and any court- or regulator-supervised process.
Gameskraft (rummy)
Gameskraft — operator of rummy products including RummyCulture — paused “Add Cash” and “Gameplay” services, displaying an in-app notification that withdrawal services remain active and user funds are secure. Gameskraft was among the firms named in the ED action (escrow accounts frozen), and reporting elsewhere noted it had shed staff sharply during the wind-down. Recovery posture: standard withdrawal-only, KYC first.
The app-by-app pattern, condensed: every major operator — Dream11, MPL, RummyCircle, My11Circle, PokerBaazi, Zupee, WinZO, Gameskraft — shut cash play on or within a day of 22 August 2025, stopped deposits, and kept withdrawals open, with public assurances that wallet balances were safe. The further an app sits from this list of regulated, well-known operators, the weaker your recovery leverage; an unbranded Teen Patti clone is a different and harder problem, covered in the 3 Patti withdrawal guide.
Does your state affect your refund?
A question that comes up from players in stricter states: does where you live change your right to a refund? For the refund itself, the answer is essentially no — and understanding why is reassuring.
Before PROGA, the state picture was a patchwork. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh had imposed blanket prohibitions on all staked games, including skill games — the strictest states, where operators often blocked users outright even when skill-gaming was legal elsewhere. Tamil Nadu banned online real-money games of chance and added player-protection rules. Haryana extended its gambling prohibition expressly to online mediums in 2025. Nagaland and Sikkim were licensing outliers. Most other states relied on the old skill-versus-chance distinction. So historically, a player in Telangana or Andhra Pradesh might have been refused onboarding or even payout because staked play was banned in that state.
Post-PROGA, that state-by-state map matters far less for a refund, for two reasons. First, PROGA is a central law that prohibits online money games everywhere, so the cash product is gone uniformly across India — there is no state where the game survives. Second, and more importantly, a refund is not gameplay. Returning your existing balance is a wind-down repayment — a return of money you are owed — processed over an RBI-regulated payment rail under nationwide consumer and payment law. The right to be repaid your own money does not depend on whether your state once banned staked play; it depends on ordinary contract and consumer rights and the central payment system, both of which apply nationwide.
So if an operator ever tries to refuse your balance recovery by citing your state of residence, treat that as a payment-service deficiency, not a legitimate gaming restriction, and escalate it through your bank and the consumer route rather than accepting it. The state layer that once gated play does not gate the repayment the Rules now require. The one practical exception is at the margins: a handful of state rules addressing things PROGA does not — offline venues, age-gating of physical premises — survive under Section 18 of the Act, but none of those touch an online balance refund.
The state-law answer, in one line: PROGA is central, so the cash game is banned uniformly and a refund is a wind-down repayment, not gameplay — your right to be repaid does not turn on your state. If an operator cites your state to refuse your balance, that is a service deficiency to escalate, not a real restriction.
What happens to a balance you never withdraw
This is the question that keeps people up at night, and the honest answer has two layers — the legal layer (what the law does and does not guarantee) and the operator-policy layer (what each app actually does at the financial-year boundary).
On the legal layer, the key fact is what the law does not provide: there is no statutory refund window and no legal deadline by which the operator must pay you. The draft Rules proposed one (the ~180-day provision often cited as Rule 24), but it was dropped from the final notified Rules (Mondaq). So the legal layer does not set a clean expiry date on your right to be repaid — your claim on the balance is an ordinary debt the operator owes you, and ordinary debts do not evaporate on a fixed gaming-rule deadline. The flip side is that there is also no statutory safety net forcing the operator to act, so the protection you rely on is entirely the operator’s voluntary wind-down flow. The practical message is blunt: claim while that voluntary flow is still running and staffed, because nothing in the law guarantees it will be there later.
On the operator-policy layer, the apps have their own handling at the end of the financial year (31 March in India), driven mostly by how TDS is computed. My11Circle, for instance, maintains a dedicated support article on what happens to a remaining balance at financial-year-end, because Section 194BA requires TDS on net winnings to be deducted either at withdrawal or at the end of the financial year, whichever is earlier (My11Circle support). In practice this means an operator may compute and deduct the 30% TDS on your net winnings at the year boundary even if you have not withdrawn, then carry the post-tax balance forward. So a balance left sitting can shrink by the TDS deduction at year-end, and the on-screen number you remember may already have tax taken out of it the next time you log in.
Put the two layers together and the conclusion writes itself. Leaving a balance unwithdrawn exposes it to two real risks — a TDS deduction at the financial-year boundary, and the gradual decay of the voluntary recovery channel as a wound-down operator sheds staff, shuts systems, and eventually may stop processing claims altogether. Neither is “theft,” and neither is a fixed statutory deadline you can count down to. Both are avoidable by withdrawing promptly. There is no scenario in which waiting helps you.
The unwithdrawn-balance reality: there is no statutory 180-day channel (that draft rule was dropped) — what you have is a voluntary operator wind-down flow that thins out over time, plus the operator’s standing duty to return money it owes you under ordinary law. The operator may also deduct 30% TDS at financial-year-end whether or not you have withdrawn. So an unclaimed balance does not legally vanish, but it can be taxed at year-end and the practical recovery route can quietly decay. The only move that protects the full amount is withdrawing it promptly.
The TDS and GST already taken out — what’s tax, what’s not
A recurring confusion in 2026: players see a recovery payout land smaller than the wallet number they remember and assume they were cheated. Almost always, the gap is tax working as designed, not the operator skimming. Here is the precise picture, because understanding it stops you wasting the days you would need for a genuine problem disputing a lawful deduction.
The 30% TDS on winnings (Section 194BA) — still fully in force
The operative rule is Section 194BA of the Income-tax Act. Since 1 April 2023, every online-gaming operator must deduct TDS at 30% on net winnings, with no minimum threshold (the old ₹10,000 floor is gone). PROGA did not touch this — tax on winnings is set by the income-tax framework, which the gaming ban left untouched. So when a discontinued operator returns your balance, it must still compute net winnings and deduct 30% before crediting you.
“Net winnings” is roughly what you came out ahead, not every individual win. The timing rule matters during a wind-down: TDS is deducted at withdrawal or at the end of the financial year, whichever is earlier (TaxGuru). That is why a balance left sitting can get taxed at the 31 March boundary, and why a withdrawal you make today gets the 30% taken at the moment of payout.
A recovery payout that arrives roughly 30% lighter than your on-screen winnings is therefore TDS, not theft. It is reportable against your PAN and creditable when you file your income-tax return — meaning if too much was withheld relative to your actual liability, you reclaim the difference through your return. The full mechanics, with worked examples for a net-winner and a net-loser, the year-end edge case, and how to read the operator’s TDS statement, are in our dedicated TDS on online gaming explainer.
The 28% GST on deposits — moot now, because you can’t deposit
Running alongside TDS was the 28% GST. From 1 October 2023, the GST Council levied 28% GST on the full face value of deposits — not on the operator’s margin, but on the entire amount you put in. For a platform charging a 10% fee, this jacked the effective tax burden from roughly 1.8% to 28% of the full deposit, a near-15x jump, per the tax commentary. That tax sat on deposits, on the way in.
Here is the key point for refunds: that 28% GST is now moot for you, because you can no longer deposit. As the tax commentary puts it bluntly, platforms are banned and “no one is offering deposits for playing except offshore, so this 28% GST has completely gone.” The GST you already paid on past deposits is not refunded to you on withdrawal — it was a tax on the deposit transaction that already happened, not a charge against your balance. So do not expect your withdrawal to be inflated by “GST coming back.” It won’t be. The only deduction you should see on the way out is the 30% TDS on net winnings.
The tax bottom line: on a recovery payout, expect a 30% TDS cut on net winnings under Section 194BA — that is lawful, PAN-reportable, and creditable on your return. The old 28% GST sat on deposits on the way in; it does not come back to you, and it is irrelevant now that deposits are closed. A payout that’s 30% short is tax, not a stolen balance. Details: TDS on online gaming.
The exact process to claim your stranded balance
This is the section most readers actually came for. You have a balance in a now-banned app and you want it out, cleanly, with the least friction. The deep, screen-by-screen version with copy-paste complaint templates is in our 3 Patti withdrawal guide; what follows is the refund-specific method, in order.
Step 1 — Get KYC clean and the account name matched
No legal payout clears to an unverified or mismatched account. Make sure your PAN is verified and that the bank account or UPI ID you withdraw to is in your own name and matches your PAN exactly. A name mismatch — “RAHUL K” on the UPI handle versus “Rahul Kumar” on the PAN — is the single most common silent stall, and it does not get easier on a wind-down account where support is thinner. My11Circle’s own help text confirms the rule: PAN and bank account must be verified before a Cash Withdrawal will process. Fix KYC first, before you even request the payout, because a request that fails KYC just adds a round-trip you cannot afford.
Step 2 — Find the truly withdrawable figure, not the headline number
Read the withdrawable figure on the withdrawal screen, not the big wallet number on the home screen. On most of these apps, the wallet splits into pots — a deposit balance, a bonus balance, and a withdrawable/winnings balance — and the deposit and bonus pots are frequently not withdrawable as cash. This is standard across RummyCircle, My11Circle and the rest, and it is not a PROGA quirk; it is how the wallets always worked. So if your “₹5,000 balance” only shows ₹3,200 as withdrawable, that is the deposit/bonus split, not money disappearing. Withdraw what the withdrawable line says you can.
Step 3 — Request the payout, expecting the 30% TDS
Submit the withdrawal for the withdrawable amount. Expect the operator to deduct 30% TDS on net winnings before crediting you. Capture a screenshot of the request, the amount, and the timestamp. If the app shows a TDS statement or a payout breakdown, save it — that is your evidence that any shortfall is tax, and it is what you will need at tax-filing time to claim the credit against your PAN.
Step 4 — Never deposit to “unlock” anything
A new deposit into a banned game is illegal and the deposit rails are closed, so any prompt to “add ₹500 to release your ₹5,000” is a scam by definition. Legitimate recovery never requires a fresh deposit. The same goes for any “customer care number” you find by searching that asks for your OTP or UPI PIN — real support never needs either, and a huge share of those numbers are pure phishing. This is the most expensive mistake on this page, because acting on it hands money to a fraudster on top of the balance you were trying to recover.
Step 5 — If the payout stalls, escalate on the payment rail, not the dead game
This is where the structure actually helps you. Your withdrawal travels over UPI or IMPS, operated by banks and aggregators regulated by the RBI. In practice the banks and intermediaries kept processing these wind-down withdrawals so users could recover balances (per the reset analysis). Once the payout is on the rail, it stops being a “gaming app problem” and becomes a payment-system problem with hard, RBI-mandated timelines — and those timelines come from the RBI’s failed-transaction rules, which apply regardless of PROGA:
- If money was debited but not credited, RBI’s Turn Around Time circular forces an auto-reversal by T+1, with ₹100 per day compensation after that.
- File a UPI dispute through your app (it feeds NPCI’s dispute system) or lodge a failed-transaction complaint with your bank, quoting the UTR — the 12-digit reference that lets a bank trace a missing credit.
- After 30 days of no resolution from the regulated entity, escalate to the RBI Integrated Ombudsman Scheme — free of charge.
That rail-side leverage is the real reason a stranded balance is recoverable even when the operator’s support desk is a skeleton crew: you are not relying on a discontinued operator’s goodwill, you are using a regulated payment system with a complaints authority behind it. The full ladder — Day 0 evidence-freezing through Day 30 Ombudsman, with every template — is in the 3 Patti withdrawal guide.
Step 6 — Act fast, because there is no legal safety net
There is no statutory deadline to “beat” here — the draft Rules’ ~180-day refund window was dropped from the final notified Rules (Mondaq), so no law forces the operator to pay you by a fixed date. That is precisely why urgency matters: the only thing actually processing your refund is the operator’s voluntary wind-down flow, and a wind-down support team in mid-2026 is a shrinking team handling a shrinking workload. The cleaner and more complete your first request — KYC matched, withdrawable figure correct, screenshots dated, UTR captured the moment it appears — the faster it clears. A request that arrives clean on the first attempt almost always beats one that triggers a back-and-forth, and on a wind-down account every avoidable round-trip costs you days you may not get back while the recovery channel quietly decays.
The recovery method in one breath: clean KYC and matched PAN → read the withdrawable figure → request the payout (expect 30% TDS) → never re-deposit → if it stalls, dispute on the bank/NPCI rail and claim ₹100/day past T+1, then escalate via consumer/OGAI routes → and do it all promptly, because there is no statutory window protecting a late claim. PROGA killed the game, not your claim on the money.
What recourse you have if an operator vanishes or stalls
The method above assumes a cooperative operator. Most of the big names are cooperative — Dream11, MPL, PokerBaazi, Zupee and the rest publicly committed to safe, withdrawable balances. But what if your operator goes silent, the app disappears from the Play Store, or the payout simply never arrives? You are not without recourse. There are four escalation routes, in roughly increasing order of force.
Recourse 1 — The payment-rail dispute (your strongest everyday lever)
This is the one you reach for first and most often, and it is the most reliable, because it does not depend on the operator answering at all. Once a payout is initiated and fails on the rail, the dispute runs through your bank and NPCI, which are RBI-regulated and bound by hard timelines — auto-reversal by T+1, ₹100/day compensation after, RBI Ombudsman after 30 days. A vanished operator cannot block a rail-side dispute, because the dispute is between you and your bank, not you and the dead app. The complete templates are in the 3 Patti withdrawal guide.
Recourse 2 — The Online Gaming Authority grievance ladder
The 2026 Rules build a two-tier grievance mechanism. First, you complain to the operator, which must run a functional grievance process and resolve within a set window. If that fails, you escalate to the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI) — an attached office of MeitY in Delhi — through the digital form on the Authority’s website or app, within 30 days of the operator’s non-resolution. The Authority endeavours to dispose of the complaint within 30 days (Rule 20), and a still-dissatisfied user can make a second appeal to the Secretary, MeitY (Rule 7). It is worth noting this ladder is built primarily for the permitted categories — e-sports and social games — so its fit for a banned money game’s stranded balance is imperfect. For a discontinued cash app, the payment-rail route is usually stronger and faster than the OGAI grievance process. But the OGAI route exists, it is digital and free, and it is a legitimate escalation if the rail dispute also stalls.
Recourse 3 — Consumer protection
A refusal to return your own balance is, in substance, a deficiency in service — and that is the territory of India’s consumer-protection framework. Filing a consumer complaint treats the refusal as a service failure (you are owed money the operator agreed to hold and return), not as a gaming dispute. This route is slower than a rail dispute but carries real weight against a domestic, identifiable operator. And note that the dropping of the special refund rule does not weaken this claim — quite the reverse: the government’s stated reason for cutting it was that existing consumer and contract law already covers returning a player’s own balance (Mondaq). So a consumer complaint is operating in exactly the legal space the government pointed to, and an operator stalling on a clean, owed balance is hard to defend on ordinary deficiency-of-service grounds.
Recourse 4 — The financial-crime angle, if user funds are frozen
If your money is caught in something larger — like the ED freezes that snagged WinZO, Gameskraft and Pocket52 user funds — your position changes. There, the money is not being withheld by a stalling operator; it is frozen by an enforcement action, and the firms themselves were arguing for the right to refund. In that situation your practical lever is to keep documented proof of your claim (KYC, balance screenshots, transaction history) ready, watch for any court-supervised or regulator-supervised refund mechanism that emerges, and lodge your claim through whatever process the Authority or the courts establish. This is the slowest and least certain route, but it is also the rarest — it only applies to the handful of firms caught in active financial-crime proceedings, not to a routine wind-down.
The recourse hierarchy, condensed: reach for the payment-rail dispute first (fastest, operator-independent, RBI-backed), then the OGAI grievance ladder (digital, free, 30-day stages), then consumer protection (deficiency-of-service — the very framework the government said already covers refunds when it dropped the special rule), and only in the rare frozen-funds case, the financial-crime claim route. A vanished operator does not strand you, because most of your leverage lives on the regulated payment rail and in existing consumer law, not inside the dead app.
The offshore trap — the one warning that matters most
Here is the most important safety point on this page, and it is the danger PROGA accidentally created. When the legal, regulated Indian operators shut down, the demand they served did not vanish — a large share of it migrated to illegal offshore betting sites, which are far more dangerous to use than the licensed apps they replaced. If you take one practical lesson from this whole guide, take this one.
The reason offshore sites are a trap, in concrete terms:
- No Indian consumer protection applies. Every recovery lever on this page — the RBI/NPCI rail rules, the ₹100/day failed-transaction compensation, the RBI Ombudsman, the OGAI grievance ladder, consumer protection — exists because the legal operators used Indian, regulated payment rails. An offshore betting site routes your money through crypto, e-wallets, or grey payment channels that sit outside RBI’s reach. When an offshore site refuses to pay, there is no Indian authority to escalate to. Your leverage is zero.
- It is a banned channel, and the money path is murky. Depositing into an offshore money game still runs into PROGA’s prohibitions on the operator and facilitator side, and the payment channels are exactly the kind the financial-facilitation offence targets.
- Scams and clones are rampant. A huge share of “customer care numbers” and “withdrawal helpers” for these sites are pure phishing, built to harvest your OTP or UPI PIN. The unregulated environment is a scammer’s paradise precisely because no one is policing it.
So the cruel irony of PROGA is that, for some users, banning the regulated product pushed them toward a far worse unregulated one. The correct response is not to chase the offshore replacements. It is to recover your stranded balance from the regulated operator using the rail-based method on this page, and then stop. If you find yourself searching for “best betting app that still works in India 2026,” understand that almost every result is an illegal offshore site with no protection for you whatsoever, and treat it accordingly. The deeper analysis of the post-PROGA offshore migration is in our PROGA Act 2025 explainer.
The offshore warning in one line: when the legal apps closed, demand fled to illegal offshore sites where none of India’s payment-rail protections, ombudsman routes, or consumer rights apply. Recover your balance from the regulated operator, then walk away; do not follow the money into a channel where you have zero recourse.
The documents and evidence you need before you start
A refund stalls far more often on missing paperwork than on operator bad faith. Assemble these 5 things before you touch the withdrawal button, because the difference between a one-attempt recovery and a three-week back-and-forth is almost entirely whether your file is complete on the first try.
1. A verified PAN that matches your name exactly. Your PAN is the spine of the whole transaction — it is what the TDS deduction reports against, and what KYC validates. Confirm the name on your PAN matches the name on your bank account and UPI handle to the letter. The most common silent stall in the entire sector is a name mismatch (a missing middle name, an initial instead of a full name), and it does not announce itself; the payout just quietly fails to clear.
2. A bank account or UPI ID in your own name. Payouts to a third-party account (a spouse, a friend, a parent) will be rejected or frozen, both by the operator’s own anti-fraud rules and by the logic of the TDS regime, which ties the payout to your PAN. Use an account that is unambiguously yours.
3. Dated screenshots of your balance. Before you do anything, screenshot the wallet showing the total and — critically — the withdrawable figure, with the date and time visible. If the on-screen number later changes (because of a year-end TDS deduction, say), these screenshots are your record of what you started with.
4. Your transaction / withdrawal history. Most apps let you export or view a statement of deposits, winnings and withdrawals. This is your proof of how much is genuinely yours and how the withdrawable figure was computed. It is also what you would attach to a consumer complaint if it came to that.
5. The UTR, the moment a payout is initiated. When you submit the withdrawal, the app generates a payout reference — and once it hits the bank rail, a UTR (the 12-digit Unique Transaction Reference). Capture it immediately. The UTR is the single thread a bank uses to trace a debited-but-not-credited payment, and without it a failed-transaction complaint is far harder to push. No UTR, no easy trace.
Keep all five in one place — a folder on your phone, a note, an email to yourself. If the payout clears cleanly, you never need them. If it stalls, having them ready turns a painful escalation into a fast one, because every authority you escalate to (your bank, the RBI Ombudsman, a consumer forum, the OGAI) will ask for exactly this evidence and reward you for having it instantly.
The pre-flight checklist, condensed: before you withdraw, have (1) a name-matched verified PAN, (2) an own-name bank/UPI, (3) dated balance screenshots, (4) your transaction history, and (5) a plan to grab the UTR the instant a payout is initiated. A complete file is the difference between a same-day recovery and a three-week chase.
A realistic timeline for your recovery
People want to know how long this takes. There is no single answer, because it depends on whether KYC is clean, whether the operator cooperates, and whether the payout fails on the rail. But here is a realistic, dated sequence for a typical recovery, assuming you start today.
Day 0 — Prepare. Open the app, confirm your KYC and PAN are verified, and check that your linked bank/UPI is in your own name and matches your PAN exactly. Read the withdrawable figure (not the headline wallet number). Screenshot everything with the date visible. This preparation day is the highest-leverage thing you do, because it prevents the most common stall.
Day 0–1 — Request. Submit the withdrawal for the withdrawable amount. Expect a 30% TDS deduction on net winnings. Note the payout reference / UTR the instant it appears.
Day 1–3 — Watch the rail. A successful UPI/IMPS payout usually credits within minutes to a couple of days. If the money was debited but not credited, RBI’s T+1 auto-reversal rule kicks in — the failed amount should reverse by the next business day, with ₹100/day compensation after.
Day 3–7 — Dispute if needed. If nothing arrived and nothing reversed, file a UPI dispute in the app and a failed-transaction complaint with your bank, quoting the UTR. This feeds the NPCI dispute system.
Day 7–30 — Escalate. If the bank/operator has not resolved it, you are approaching the 30-day mark after which you can take it to the RBI Ombudsman (free) and, separately, lodge an OGAI grievance or a consumer-protection complaint.
Throughout — act promptly, there is no statutory window. Do not pace this against a legal deadline, because there isn’t one — the draft Rules’ ~180-day refund window was dropped from the final notified Rules. The only clock that matters is practical: a wound-down operator’s voluntary recovery flow thins out over time, so the sooner you complete a clean recovery, the better. Most clean recoveries finish in days, not months.
The timeline, condensed: a clean recovery is usually a days-long process — prepare KYC on Day 0, request, watch the rail, and most payouts clear fast. The escalation ladder (bank dispute → 30-day Ombudsman → OGAI/consumer) exists for the minority that stall. There is no statutory 180-day window to finish inside — that draft rule was dropped — so the guiding principle is simply to recover promptly while the operator’s voluntary flow is still running.
Common scams targeting people trying to recover balances
The wind-down created a feeding ground for fraud, because millions of people are simultaneously searching for “how to withdraw my Dream11/RummyCircle/MPL balance.” Scammers know this. Here are the specific cons aimed at refund-seekers, so you can spot them.
The “deposit to unlock” con. You are told to “add ₹500 to release your ₹5,000 withdrawal.” This is a scam by definition — a new deposit into a banned game is illegal, the deposit rails are closed, and no legitimate recovery ever requires fresh money. Anyone asking for a deposit to release a withdrawal is a fraudster, full stop.
The fake customer-care number. You search “[App] customer care number,” call the top result, and a “support agent” walks you through “verifying” your account — which somehow requires your OTP or UPI PIN. Real support never asks for either. Those numbers are overwhelmingly phishing operations that buy search ads or seed fake listings. Use only the in-app support flow, never a number you found by searching.
The fake “refund portal.” A site or message claims to be an “official PROGA refund portal” or a “gaming ban compensation scheme” and asks you to enter bank details or pay a “processing fee.” There is no such third-party portal. Your refund comes from the operator’s own app, through the operator’s own withdrawal flow. Any external “refund portal” is fake.
The clone app. A near-identical app or a mirror website mimics the real operator and harvests your login. Download apps only from official stores and the operator’s verified channels; a banned cash app you “find” through a random link is a clone or an offshore trap.
The “help you recover” agent. Someone offers, for a fee or a percentage, to “recover your stuck balance for you.” A legitimate recovery is something you do yourself for free through the app and your bank. Handing your credentials to a stranger to “recover” your money is how you lose it.
The anti-scam rule, in one line: a real recovery never requires a fresh deposit, never needs your OTP or UPI PIN, and never runs through a third-party “refund portal” or paid “recovery agent.” It happens inside the operator’s own app and, if it stalls, through your own bank. Anything else is a scam.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still get my money back from Dream11 after it shut down?
Yes. Dream11 ended all real-money contests on 22 August 2025 and moved to a free-to-play model, but it publicly assured users that account balances are safe and available for withdrawal and kept the withdrawal facility open. Complete KYC, request the payout to an own-name account that matches your PAN, and expect a 30% TDS cut on net winnings.
Is there a Rule 24 180-day refund window?
No — not in the final law, and this is the most common misconception about the ban. The draft 2026 Rules (October 2025) contained a provision, widely cited as Rule 24, that would have created a roughly 180-day safe harbour for operators to repay pre-ban user balances. But in the final notified Rules (Gazette 22 April 2026, in force 1 May 2026), the user-fund refund provisions were cut — on the basis that existing law already covers the matter (Mondaq; iGaming Business). So there is no statutory 180-day refund window and no legal deadline forcing a payout. Recovery rests on the operator’s voluntary wind-down flow, your existing consumer and RBI/NPCI rights, and the OGAI grievance ladder.
When does my right to a refund expire?
There is no statutory expiry date, because there is no statutory refund window — the draft’s ~180-day provision was dropped from the final Rules. Your claim on the balance is an ordinary debt the operator owes you, which does not lapse on a gaming-rule deadline. The real risk is practical, not legal: a wound-down operator’s voluntary recovery flow thins out over time and could eventually stop working, so finish your recovery promptly rather than relying on it being available indefinitely.
Will my refund be taxed?
Yes — 30% TDS on net winnings under Section 194BA, with no minimum threshold, still applies to a wind-down payout because PROGA did not touch income tax. So a recovery that arrives about 30% lighter than your on-screen winnings is tax, reportable against your PAN and creditable on your return — not theft. See our TDS on online gaming page for worked examples.
Do I get the 28% GST back on my deposits?
No. The 28% GST sat on deposits on the way in (from 1 October 2023), and it was a tax on the deposit transaction that already happened. It is not refunded to you on withdrawal, and it is irrelevant now that deposits are closed. The only deduction you should see on a payout is the 30% TDS on net winnings.
Can I be arrested for withdrawing my gaming balance?
No. PROGA’s offences target operators, advertisers and money-movers, not players. There are 0 player-facing prison terms in the Act, and law firms confirm no criminal liability attaches to player participation. Withdrawing your existing balance is not a banned transaction — it is a return of money you are owed, which the government treated as already covered by existing law when it dropped the draft’s special refund provision (Mondaq).
My11Circle stopped my deposits — is my balance still there?
Yes. Games24x7 (which runs My11Circle and RummyCircle) stopped accepting deposits but kept withdrawals open. My11Circle’s support tells users to verify KYC, PAN and bank account, then use My Account → Cash Withdrawal. Note that TDS may be deducted at the financial-year end (31 March) even if you have not withdrawn, so do not leave it sitting.
What happens to my balance if I never withdraw it?
Two risks. The operator may deduct 30% TDS at the financial-year boundary under Section 194BA whether or not you withdraw, and the operator’s voluntary recovery channel decays over time as a wound-down company sheds staff and shuts systems — there is no statutory window guaranteeing it stays open (the draft’s ~180-day rule was dropped). The money does not legally become a windfall for the operator, and your claim does not lapse on a fixed gaming deadline, but waiting only costs you — withdraw promptly.
Which apps shut down, and when?
All the major real-money operators shut cash play on or within a day of 22 August 2025: Dream11 (ended real-money contests, went free-to-play), MPL (suspended cash gaming, stopped deposits), RummyCircle / My11Circle (Games24x7, stopped deposits), PokerBaazi (paused operations), Zupee (discontinued paid games), WinZO (withdrew real-money offerings), and Gameskraft (paused Add Cash and Gameplay). All kept withdrawals open.
Why was user money frozen in the ED raids?
In late 2025, before the Rules were notified, the Enforcement Directorate froze assets of WinZO (₹505 crore), and escrow accounts of Pocket52 and Gameskraft (₹18.57 crore), flagging around ₹43 crore of WinZO user funds. The firms argued that without the Act being enforced, they could not safely refund, and pushed for the draft’s refund safe-harbour. When the final Rules arrived on 1 May 2026, that safe-harbour was dropped — so trapped funds in active enforcement cases fall back to whatever court- or regulator-supervised process emerges, under existing law, rather than a special PROGA refund window.
How long does a refund take?
Usually days, not months, for a clean recovery: prepare KYC on Day 0, request the payout, and most UPI/IMPS credits clear within minutes to a couple of days. The escalation ladder (bank dispute → 30-day RBI Ombudsman → OGAI/consumer) exists for the minority that stall. There is no statutory 180-day window acting as a backstop (that draft rule was dropped), so the only timing guidance is to recover promptly while the operator’s voluntary flow is still running.
What if the operator just ignores my withdrawal request?
Use the payment-rail dispute first — it runs between you and your bank/NPCI, so a silent operator cannot block it. RBI rules force an auto-reversal by T+1 with ₹100/day compensation after, and you can escalate free to the RBI Ombudsman after 30 days. Backup routes are the OGAI grievance ladder and a consumer-protection complaint. Templates are in the 3 Patti withdrawal guide.
Someone asked me to deposit money to release my withdrawal — is that real?
No, it is a scam by definition. A new deposit into a banned game is illegal and the deposit rails are closed, so any “add ₹500 to unlock ₹5,000” message is fraud. Legitimate recovery never requires a fresh deposit, and real support never needs your OTP or UPI PIN. Use only the in-app withdrawal flow.
Are offshore betting sites a safe place to play now that the Indian apps are gone?
No, and this is the most harmful myth around the ban. Offshore sites are illegal, route money outside RBI’s reach, and offer 0 Indian consumer protection — no ombudsman, no failed-transaction compensation, no recourse when they refuse to pay. Recover your balance from the regulated operator and stop; do not follow the money offshore where your leverage is zero.
Is there an official government refund portal for the gaming ban?
No. There is no third-party “PROGA refund portal” or “gaming ban compensation scheme” — and, just as importantly, no statutory refund scheme at all (the draft’s refund provision was dropped from the final Rules). Your refund comes from the operator’s own app, through its own voluntary withdrawal flow, backstopped by existing consumer and RBI law. Any external site asking for bank details or a “processing fee” to release a gaming refund is a scam.
Sources and further reading
This guide is built on government notifications, named law-firm analysis, and contemporaneous news reporting, all listed in full in the page metadata. The load-bearing ones: MediaNama and The Week on the August 2025 wind-down; Business Standard and Deccan Herald on PokerBaazi and WinZO; Storyboard18 on the draft refund provision and the ED raids; Mondaq and iGaming Business confirming the user-fund refund provisions were cut from the final notified Rules; the PIB press release on the notified Rules; GaganLegal and Drishti IAS on the 2026 Rules and the Authority; SCC Online on the 1 May 2026 enforcement date; My11Circle support on the withdrawal mechanics and year-end balance; TaxGuru on the TDS and GST treatment; and the RBI Turn Around Time circular on payout-recovery rights.
Reminder — this is information, not legal advice. It is a sourced, third-person reference written to help you understand the post-PROGA wind-down and recover a stranded balance from a discontinued app. It is not written by a lawyer and does not create any advisory relationship. Note in particular that there is no statutory refund window — the draft Rules’ ~180-day provision was dropped from the final notified Rules — so recovery rests on the operator’s voluntary process and existing law, and the precise treatment of your particular balance can turn on facts specific to you. For any decision that carries legal or financial consequences, consult a qualified advocate or tax professional.