Amidst COVID-19 crisis, Keralites chase luck to become rich, lottery sales cross 1 crore per day

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], January 8 : Keralites seem to be chasing luck when it comes to becoming rich, if the number of lottery ticket sales put out by the Kerala Lottery Department is anything to go by.
Amidst Covid-19, an increase in lottery price did not deter Malayalees from buying more than one crore lottery tickets or 1,00,20,000 tickets in a day!
As per Kerala Lottery Department, it 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 soared 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. The December sales figures also show that an average of more than 90 lakh lottery tickets are sold every day," said an official of the Lottery Department.
The weekly lottery tickets sold, 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 lakh tickets were being printed. This is against the sales in 2015 when only 50-60 lakhs weekly tickets were sold per day.
One reason for the increase in sales, the lottery department says is that 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 also has benefited 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," said the official.
The Lottery Department's had also opened 18 new Lottery Sub Offices across the State and the creation of new posts after seeing the potential in the sector.