Expressing the State government's inability to ban other State lotteries while running one of its own, Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac has said that the government is ready to ban the Kerala Lottery if the Congress and the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) are ready to share the responsibility for it.
“State governments do not have the power to take action against other State lotteries. Only the Centre can do that. It has not responded to the 17 letters sent to it by the State seeking action against the illegal methods being adopted by the other State lottery operators. The only option is to ban all lotteries including that being run by the Kerala government. We are ready to do that, but then the Congress and the UDF should be ready to bear responsibility for it,” Dr. Isaac told The Hindu over the phone on Saturday.
The Finance Minister pointed out that the State could not be seen as discriminating against any particular State or lottery. It could go in for a ban of the other State lotteries only if it was ready to ban its own lottery. The State had once attempted a ban on lotteries, but with serious consequences. If at all a ban was to be imposed on operation of lotteries, it would require a political consensus where every political party took the responsibility for the fallout, he pointed out.
Dr. Isaac said there were no two opinions in the government about the fraudulent means being adopted by the outside lottery operators. It had conducted its own investigations to detect such practices and had also taken all steps necessary to fight such operators in the highest court in the country. Under the existing laws, it could only request the Centre to initiate action against such practices of the outside lottery operators. So far all such efforts had been to no avail. “Let everybody come forward to take the responsibility, then we can think of banning all lotteries,” he said.
Actor's response
In a related development, actor Jagathy Sreekumar on Saturday announced that he would not henceforth appear in lottery advertisement in deference to Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan's call on Friday to artistes and celebrities not to allow their image to be exploited by gold merchants and lottery operators to fuel peoples craze for gold and easy wealth and turn them into fortune-seekers.
