Chief Minister’s Office denies diversion of printing of lottery tickets from government presses

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister’s office has denied reports that the printing of Kerala lottery tickets had been diverted from government printing presses to a private printing press.

The office said in a press release that the government had decided to increase the number of tickets being printed from 60 lakhs to 90 lakhs a day. However, two government presses could not print that many tickets per day. Hence, it was decided, in principle, that a third press with equity participation of State Small Industries Development Corporation could be considered for carrying out the printing.

It clarified that excluding government presses from printing of lottery tickets had not been thought of. The only proposal was to use a third one after exhausting their capacity. A three member technical committee had been set up to consider the matter and the decision was to act only on the basis of the report of the committee.

The committee was yet to start its assessment including the security of the proposed press and facility for numbering the tickets. A decision would be taken only on the basis of the committee’s assessment.

The release noted that though there was higher demand for lotteries, enough tickets could not be supplied. The annual revenue from lotteries stood at Rs. 6500 crores. This was proposed to be raised to Rs. 1000 a year.

In 2010-11, the State’s revenue from lotteries was of Rs. 550 crore annually. It was alleged that the lottery operator Santiago Martin was doing sale of lotteries amounting to Rs. 3655 crore a year. The UDF government ended the operations of Mr. Martin and introduced the Karunya lotteries to extend medical assistant to the poor. Rs. 2000 crore had thus been given as medical assistance to 1.42 lakh persons.  The government also proposed to start a new lottery, Stree Sakthi to provide assistance for marriages of poor girls.