Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Lottery Department has achieved unprecedented gains in the weekly lottery ticket sales in the state overcoming the crisis created by the Covid pandemic as the lottery ticket sales soar over the last few months.
In November 2020, the per-day sales had reached up to 1,00,20,000 tickets. This is the first such increase since the weekly ticket price was hiked to Rs 40, though ticket sales have crossed the one crore mark in the past also. The December sales figures also show that an average of more than 90 lakh lottery tickets is sold every day.
The weekly lottery tickets, which had lucky draws all the seven days a week, were completely cancelled for more than 90 days from March 2020, when the lockdown began. Since then, the sales were increased from three days a week to five days except for Thursdays and Sundays. By the time ticket sales resumed in September, 46 lakhs tickets were being printed. This increase should be seen against the sales in 2015 when only 50 – 60 lakhs weekly tickets were sold per day.
When the lottery ticket sales resumed after the lockdown, in order to alleviate the financial hardship faced by the lottery sellers, coupons worth Rs 3,500 were issued to the active members registered with the Lottery Welfare Board.
The Lottery Department has benefitted from a new system to detect fake tickets in the market. A mobile app called Bhagyakeralam has been developed to scan the QR code on tickets to check if they are fake. The lottery tickets designed with CDiT’s technical assistance include seven types of security measures. The growth of the Lottery Department has also been helped by its ability to curb the sale of counterfeit tickets.
After this Government come to power, the Lottery Department’s achievements include the opening up of 18 new Lottery Sub Offices across the State and the creation of new posts under the Lottery Department. The new offices were very useful for agents and lottery sellers who previously relied solely on district centres to collect lottery tickets for sale. The gift distribution was expedited and the QR code was made part of the security arrangements. The Department believes that the introduction of the QR code system has led to an increase in ticket sales.