High court threatens to close online lotteries if Maharashtra continues to snub lawsuit

Maharashtra’s continued refusal to respond to a lawsuit could cost the Indian state its precious online lotteries.

Last week, the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court warned the Maharashtra government to file an affidavit answering a public interest litigation (PIL) filed against the state within two weeks—or risk having all its online lotteries shut down, Times of India reported.

The PIL was filed by a Chandan Trivedi, who asked the high court to immediately ban the “unauthorized and alluring” online lotteries in the state.

In his petition, Trivedi claimed that there are more than 1,300 “bogus online lotteries” promoted by other states within Maharashtra, despite the government permitting only 13 lotteries to operate in the state. According to the PIL, the online lotteries—in which results were announced every 15 minutes on a single-digit—were under different names and the operators were able to secure permission not from Maharashtra, but from states like Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Meghalaya.