Kerala Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac has said that the government is in possession of evidence to show that the other State lottery tickets sought to be sold in the State were not being printed in a security press.
At a press conference here on Tuesday, Dr. Isaac said inspections conducted by officers of the State Commercial Taxes Department with the help of their counterparts in Tamil Nadu had shown that the printing press at Sivakasi where the Sikkim and Bhutan lotteries were being printed did not have the ‘security press' status from either the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or the Indian Banks Association (IBA). The government had reported the matter to the Centre and the Sikkim government, he said.
Dr. Isaac said the officers had conducted simultaneous inspections at 417 lottery retail outlets on September 13 and at 619 outlets on September 18, 19 and 20, but could not find any evidence for sale of other State lottery tickets after the State government stopped accepting advance taxes from them. Of the 619 outlets inspected, 279 were found to be shut down and no evidence of unauthorised sale was available there. There was a report from Kozhikode about the sale of a ticket with a face value of Rs.20. One ticket of the face value was seized and a case registered by the Palakkad police in this connection.
ADVERTISEMENT
Although the police had received a few other complaints of illegal lottery sale, they could not gather any evidence to substantiate them. A person named Mansoor was arrested by the police for the sale of a Bhutan lottery ticket. The Palakkad police had registered a case of cheating in connection with the incident which involved the sale of a ticket for a lottery for which the draw had already taken place.
The government, he said, would soon approach court seeking quashing of the Central Lottery Rules which militated the States' ability to curb the illegal activities of lottery operators. Asked about the investigations about the fire at the Palakkad office of Megha Distributors, one of the leading other State lotteries, that had engulfed what could have been evidence for the investigations into the operations, Dr. Isaac said the matter was being investigated by the police.