Kerala lottery overcomes COVID-19 crisis, records increase in weekly ticket sales

The Kerala lotterydepartment has made unprecedented gains in the weekly ticketsales in the state overcoming the crisis triggered by theCOVID-19 pandemic, as the sales soar in the last few months.

In November 2020, the per-day sales reached up to1,00,20,000 tickets.

This is the first such increase since the weekly ticketprice was hiked to Rs 40, though sales have crossed the onecrore mark in the past also, an official statement said here.

The December sales figures also show that an average ofmore than 90 lakh lottery tickets were sold every day, itsaid.

The weekly lottery tickets, which had lucky draws all theseven days a week, were completely cancelled for more than 90days from March 2020, when the lockdown began.

Since then, the sales have increased from three days aweek to five days except for Thursdays and Sundays, it said.

By the time ticket sales resumed in September, 46 lakhstickets were being printed.

This increase should be seen against the sales in 2015when 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 thelottery sellers, coupons worth Rs 3,500 were issued to theactive members registered with the Lottery Welfare Board, itsaid.

The Lottery department has also benefited from a newsystem to detect fake tickets in the market, the statementsaid.

A mobile app called 'Bhagyakeralam' was developed to scanthe QR code on tickets to check if they are fake.

The introduction of the QR code system also considered tobe one of the reasons for an increase in ticket sales, thestatement added.