FRONT PAGE | Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | Email | Print | 
Centre set to legalise online lotteries
J Gopikrishnan | New Delhi
The Central Government plans to legalise online lotteries by bringing it under the purview of Lotteries (Regulation) Act-1998. This Act was brought to curb the rampant surge of online lotteries across the country.
The draft of the proposed rule prepared by the Union Home Ministry — the Lotteries (Regulation) Rules 2010 — has given legal sanctity to online lotteries by clubbing it with other lottery.
At present, majority of States have banned online lotteries on the ground that it was a gambling activity. The proposed rule would delink gambling and online lotteries. This would also give opportunities to online lottery companies to challenge the ban order of different States.
The Central Government’s move to include online lottery in the Lotteries Act had already invited the opposition from the Left parties. Talking to The Pioneer, the Kerala Finance Minister and CPI(M) central committee member Thomas Isaac has alleged this move is the result of the “nexus between the Congress and the online lottery mafias”.
“The draft rule had the design of taking the online lotteries out of the scope of the word gambling and bringing it under the general head of lotteries. This mischievous rule was the result of an unholy nexus between the Congress and powerful online lottery lobby,” alleged the Kerala Finance Minister.
“We have banned the online lotteries and won the case in the High Court. This shoddy action was in the context of a case in the Supreme Court where certain online lottery operators had appealed against the Kerala Government’s decision to ban online lotteries,” he added.
The draft rule says that online lottery means a system created to permit players to purchase lottery tickets generated by the computer/online machine at the lottery terminals where the information about the sale of a ticket and the player’s choice of any particular number or combination of numbers is simultaneously registered with the Central Computer Server.
“The Central Computer Server means a system of multiple computers at a central location under the direct control of the organising State that accepts, processes, stores and validates the online lottery transactions and otherwise manages, monitors and controls the entire system of online lottery,” it adds.
Online lotteries had entered the Indian market in late ‘90s. Following public outcry, several State Governments banned them. Subsequently, the then NDA Government also brought a comprehensive Lottery Act to enable the State impose ban on online lotteries. It was like a surrogate operation. Online lottery operators became the State Government’s distributors or service providers of the gaming.
According to Law Ministry officials, the draft law will be finalised soon and the present publication of draft rule was meant for the routine ‘public hearing’.
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