Cheating Capital of India: It's not Delhi, but 9 out of 20 spots are from here; Tamil Nadu town tops the list; read more

A new report by dating app Ashley Madison shows which states in India have people seeking the most extra-marital affairs. Does your city feature in the list?

Not Delhi, Mumbai, or Bengaluru; Kanchipuram (the small town in Tamil Nadu known for its silks and temples) has been named as the cheating capital of India. According to a 2025 report by Ashley Madison — a dating app for married people (yep, people cheating on their spouses) — several small town locales have been tracked to be active on this platform for married-but-mingling individuals.

Several small towns and tier 2 cities have featured on the list shared by the dating app (Photo: Shutterstock [For representational purposes only]))

But this doesn't mean Delhi is far behind. Delhi and its NCR cousins have dominated India's extramarital charts.

Delhi's report card

Six Delhi districts — Central, South West, East, South, West and North West — made it to the top 20 cities with the highest number of affairs. Throw in the usual NCR suspects — Gurgaon, Noida, and Ghaziabad — and nine out of the 20 Indian hotspots are Delhi-adjacent.

Not to be outdone, Central Delhi ranks second only to Kanchipuram, which made an astonishing jump from 17th to 1st in just a year. Meanwhile, South Delhi’s anonymity and West Delhi’s business buzz, coupled with late-night “I’m at work” excuses in Noida and Gurugram, seem to have translated into full-blown online infidelity trends.

In India

Here's the full list of cities where love is... complicated:

1. Kanchipuram

2. Central Delhi

3. Gurgaon (Gurugram)

4. Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida)

5. South West Delhi

6. Dehradun

7. East Delhi

8. Pune

9. Bangalore (Bengaluru)

10. South Delhi

11. Chandigarh

12. Lucknow

13. Kolkata

14. West Delhi

15. Kamrup

16. North West Delhi

17. Raigarh

18. Hyderabad

19. Ghaziabad

20. Jaipur

What’s driving Dilliwalas' double lives?

Experts and surveys alike suggest a cocktail of factors: emotional distance, long working hours, work-from-home fatigue, social autonomy, and, of course, anonymity that big city life generously offers. With apps like Ashley Madison enabling discreet digital dalliances, even the traditional bastions of monogamy are shifting. This is not just a metro story either — from Kanchipuram’s quiet temples to Raigarh’s remote lanes, digital dating is redrawing the emotional geography of relationships in India. But it’s Delhi NCR that’s clearly rewriting the rules fastest.

Swipe left on monogamy? Delhi already did.

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