Diwali bonus goes down the drain; instant lottery is back with a bang in TN

The result — precious monthly earnings and Diwali bonus of several middle-class families have gone down the drain. According to sources in the Lottery Agents and Sellers Association, sale of instant lottery tickets has sharply gone up in the last one week. “While sales during normal times will be in the order of Rs 25 lakh all over the State, it has touched nearly Rs 40 lakh this Diwali”.

The lottery agents’ gain is the buyers’ loss,and untold misery for several families in the State. In fact, to trap the bonus-rich lottery addicts, several `instant lottery shops’ have sprung up close to railway stations in the City and in several suburban areas particularly in Alandur, St Thomas Mount, Tambaram, Nanganallur and Madipakkam.

While the instant-lottery hawkers in Chennai sell them on the sly, it is a no-holds-barred affair in the suburban areas. “If we pay the police their mamool, they look away,” says a lottery dealer at St Thomas Mount, pleading anonymity.

Sales is so unabashedly transparent that at Madipakkam junction, loudspeakers blare out advertisements of the instant-lottery shops, to bait Deepavali shoppers. At the Madipakkam junction itself, six instant lottery outlets have sprouted, in the last few weeks. This apart, tickets are available in some ice-cream parlours and petty shops in the suburbs.

And it is not just the office-goers who haunt these shops. To woo students, tickets carry pictures of cricket starsSachin Tendulkar and Mohammed Azharuddin. To cap it all, lotteries are named after superstar Rajnikant’s film hits.

For instance, ticket with the picture of a grinning Tendulkar is called `Mannan’ (the title of a Rajnikant film), and the one with Azharuddin’s picture is `Yejamaan’ (another Rajnikant starrer). There is also a Jurassic Park and a Ponds-1000 draw. Tickets come in various denominations, from Rs 2 to Rs 55. For a ticket priced at Rs 2, you can get as much as Rs 16, if you scratch the silver band on the ticket and find that the numbers listed there match the winning numerals displayed in the shop.

The maximum that a buyer can win is Rs 500, for a ticket of Rs 55 denomination.

While it is the lure of quick money that spawns lottery addicts, in most cases, they lose, and badly at that. “I would have lost at least Rs 10,000 in the last six months,” says Ponnusamy, a mason, even as he shells out a Rs 100 note to try his luck, all over again.

With a sheepish grin, he scratches off the silvercoating over the `hidden’ numbers and announces that he has frittered away his money once again.“I could have bought a dress for my kid with the money,” he adds as an after-thought. But he can’t just kick off the habit. “It is a petty desire I can’t give up”.

According to Lottery Agents and Sellers Association general secretary V C Ramakrishnan, nearly 5,000 shops all over the State are selling instant lotteries. “Though the court has ordered stay on the State Government ban, in some places the police are strict and do not allow us to sell instant lottery tickets. In most places, they take mamool and allow sales.”

With the city police relatively strict with lottery hawkers, sales here is on the sly. At Chetpet, Egmore, T Nagar, Guindy, Saidapet and Central railway stations, tickets are available only for regulars. The stock reply a stranger gets is, “it’s illegal stuff and we don’t sell them here.”

Even in Tamil Nadu’s lottery headquarters, Triplicane, tickets are sold surreptitiously, becausethe local police is strict, claim the dealers. But almost all lottery retailers get their instant-lottery ticket supplies only from Triplicane. Though the dealers claim that the tickets come from Government of Mizoram and Manipur undertakings, they are undoubtedly printed in Tamil Nadu, and the draws held locally, say informed sources.

According to the dealers, more than 100 lakh tickets are circulated in the market. Even the police do not appear too sure whether sale of instant lottery is legal or not. “We have sought legal advice from the Government,” says Chengalpattu SP, Durairaj. While the Centre had promulgated an ordinance banning instant lotteries, and the State Government clamped a ban last year, lottery agents moved the High Court, which ordered a stay on operation of the ban. But the Supreme Court, in a related case, has recently expressed grave concern over the menace.

Even as confusion over legality of its sale continues, the police, lottery agents and dealers are making hay, while theaddicts continue to lose their hard-earned money.