Coldplay concert: Bombay HC reserves order on PIL seeking action against black marketing of tickets 

On Thursday, senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas, representing Vyas, argued before a division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar that as the state has imposed entertainment tax or duty on organisers of the event to be held at D Y Patil stadium, it is the authorities’ duty to ensure tickets are not sold in the black market and the public at large is not cheated.

The PIL also sought the court’s direction to booking platforms such as BookMyShow and event promoters Live Nation Entertainment, Big Tree Entertainment, and Viagogo Entertainment, among others, to cooperate with expert and monitoring panels.

“It is an illegal sale as it is sold by scalpers at a high premium. There has to be some form of protection of the public as people are left at mercy of private entities. There are bots which buy the tickets through secondary sellers even before the public gets access to them. Rs 2,500 ticket was made available on black marketing sites for Rs 50, 000. The Britain, US and Australia are acting against such organisers and it has become a global crime. The primary sellers of the tickets of the said event are not cooperating with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW). We have a system in place to ensure that such black-marketing does not occur in future,” Dwarkadas argued.

The bench suggested the petitioner approach the state with his grievances and remarked, “You are inviting us to enter into policy making. You are also asking us to begin a regulatory measure. It is all for the state to do. We will ask the state to consider grievances.  We have our own well defined ambit…State’s criminal law enforcement agencies are not so weak that if a third party is not cooperating with them, they do not know how to make them cooperate.”

Dwarkadas urged that pending hearing, the court can form a monitoring committee led by a former high court judge and consisting of cyber experts and give recommendations to authorities to ensure effective implementation of security measures for the online ticketing system of major events.

“There will be 50 other shows in the meantime…Guidelines can be laid down if there is a vacuum in the law, advantage of which scalpers are taking,” he argued.

The bench concluded the hearing and reserved its verdict.