Dream merchants hit panic button

PUNE, April 1: While local Congress leaders welcomed the Central Government8217;s move to initiate a ban on lotteries, it was bad news for the 40,000-odd retailers in the city who make a living from selling dreams to the masses.

A pall of gloom descended on the men who sell luck and lucre as cheap as Rs 2 a ticket but hope continued to loom large that Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray would bail them out, as promised in his fiery outburst in the media.

8220;Forty thousand of our men who work as lottery agents will be rendered jobless if the ban actually comes about,8221; said a worried Satish Chopra of the Pune Zilla Lottery Vikreta Sangh. Besides them, the axe would also fall on the ten courier services they were using, the printing press, the paper mills and the thousands of people who work as across-the-counter salespersons, he added.