In a bid to stop the sale of Mizoram lottery tickets, the government of Kerala has written to the Union Home Ministry to ban Mizoram Lotteries in the state.
In its letter, Kerala officials accused Mizoram of violating the Central Lotteries Regulation Act because it has an existing agreement with Teesta Distributors, reported The New Indian Express. A circular released by the Union Home Ministry in August 2011 requires states seeking to sell its lotteries in another state to submit all details of its marketing to the destination state.
Kerala Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac revealed last week that the state only learned about the move to promote the Mizoram lottery “through a newspaper advertisement.”
Isaac also accused the government of Mizoram of adopting the “unambiguously illegal” Minimum Guaranteed Revenue model, which he said violated the Lotteries Regulation. The Lotteries Rules require the entire proceeds of lottery ticket sales to be deposited in the state exchequer, but the recent Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report revealed that the state government never collected the sales proceeds, and that the distributors deposited a “minimum guaranteed revenue” to the state and kept the money, which eventually resulted in the state losing close to $2 billion in revenue.
The CAG report also found that the state awarded tenders for conducting paper and online lotteries to four companies—M/s. Teesta Distributors, E-Cool Gaming Solutions Pvt. Ltd., M/s, NV International, and Summit Online Trade Solutions Pvt. Ltd.—without following the Central Vigilance Commission’s guidelines, which would have “assured the highest share of revenue from sale of lottery tickets to the government.”
“As per the Lotteries (Regulation) Rules, the organizing state should provide details about all the arrangements they have made for the conduct of lotteries in the host state,” Isaac said, according to Deccan Chronicle. “This letter, sent to the Chief Secretary, just mentions the name of the distributor and nothing more.”
