A Maharashtra official is going after six lottery operators that she claimed have cheated the state government out of an estimated INR1,000 crore (USD149.622 million) in taxes.
Account officer Sneha Narvekar is accusing the operators—M/s Swagat Agency, M/s Samarpan Trading Pvt Ltd, M/s Kenlot Gaming Solutions Pvt Ltd, M/s Jupiter Gaming Pvt Ltd, M/s SL Marketing and M/s Shweta Enterprises—of defaulting on tax payments, according to a mid-day.com report.
Narvekar, who also serves as the state’s assistant commissioner for lottery tax, discovered that the six “had drawn lotteries in the state but had not paid any tax.” The operators, according to the official, illegally sold online tickets of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram and operated lottery draws in Maharashtra without informing the state officials.
“They have also not paid advance tax and in an organised manner in order to gain wrongful profit caused a revenue loss of Rs 913.13 crores to Maharashtra,” the report stated.
The six are facing charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and under relevant sections of the Maharashtra Tax on Lottery Act, according to the Economic Offences Wing of the city police.
Online lottery operators in Maharashtra are currently embroiled in a court fight in the state, which was asked—via a public interest litigation (PIL)—to immediately ban the “unauthorized and alluring” online lotteries in the state.
The lottery rules formed by the state government required operators to pay advance tax on all types of online lotteries in Maharashtra, but the high court ordered an interim stay on it after lottery companies challenged the legality of the rules. This, in turn, resulted in online lottery companies from outside states avoiding paying the taxes totaling INR933 crore (USD139.44 million).
The petition claimed that there are more than 1,300 “bogus online lotteries” promoted by other states within Maharashtra, despite the government permitting only 13 lotteries to operate in the state. According to the PIL, the online lotteries—in which results were announced every 15 minutes on a single-digit—were under different names and the operators were able to secure permission not from Maharashtra, but from states like Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Meghalaya.
Seventeen states in India have either banned lottery games or restricted the business within their local borders. In Kerala, only state lottery is allowed, and its proceeds are used for social sectors. The Kerala government doesn’t allow other states’ lottery operations on its territory, which states such as Sikkim, Meghalaya and Nagaland challenged.
