The Indian government had banned Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) in the country few months ago. The app was banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) under section 69A of the IT Act 2000. This is pretty similar to PUBG Mobile and Free Fire ban in the country. The government takes an issue with servers located in foreign countries like China. However, the government hasn’t really given any official statement to explain why these apps were banned. Now, a BGMI fan has filed an RTI to ask why BGMI was banned in India.
There was real problem of data security… I filled this RTI .. please check out 👇 pic.twitter.com/O7oBuGnopF
— GodYamarajOP (@godyamarajop) September 26, 2022
Twitter user GodYamarajOP has shared screenshots of their RTI query. The RTI response reveals that BGMI was banned by Meity after requests from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The response reads, “Based on the requests received through designated nodal officers from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has blocked the gaming application battlegrounds mobile India (BGMI) under the provision of section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Inf. union for Public) Rules, 2009.”
The RTI response also confirms that Meity had held a meeting with Krafton representatives. However, the government organization hasn’t revealed what was discussed in the meeting as it maintains strict confidentiality under Rule 16 of the IT Rules, 2009. The response further says, “Section 694 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 states that matters relating to the sovereignty and integrity of India will remain classified and are protected by provisions 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act 2005. Because of this, the information requested in the RTI cannot be made public.”
While the game is unavailable on Google Play Store and App Store, you can still play it on your iPhone if you had it installed on your device before the ban. Meanwhile, on Android devices, the game will ask you to update to the latest version, which you cannot do as BGMI has been removed from Play Store. However, you can sideload the latest version of BGMI APK to continue playing the game. It’s unclear how Krafton is going to relaunch BGMI in India.
