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

The Kerala lottery department has made unprecedented gains in the weekly ticket sales in the state overcoming the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, as the sales soar in the last few months.

In November 2020, the per-day sales 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 sales have crossed the one crore mark in the past also, an official statement said here.

The December sales figures also show that an average of more than 90 lakh lottery tickets was sold every day, it said. 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.

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Since then, the sales have increased from three days a week to five days except for Thursdays and Sundays, it said. By the time ticket sales resumed in September, 46 lakh 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, it said.

The Lottery department has also benefited from a new system to detect fake tickets in the market, the statement said. A mobile app called 'Bhagyakeralam' was developed to scan the QR code on tickets to check if they are fake. The introduction of the QR code system also considered to be one of the reasons for an increase in ticket sales, the statement added.