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Karnataka
By Our Special Correspondent
He told presspersons here today that going by the "patronage" extended to the online lottery operators by the State Government, it was evident that there was a "secret understanding" between the Government and the lottery operators. While the operators enjoyed a turnover of Rs. 5,000 crore a year, the net revenue to the State Government from the online lottery was a meagre Rs. 50 crore. Mr. Sindhia said if the Government did not ban the online lottery immediately, it would force the people to start a Statewide agitation similar to the "Neera" (unfermented toddy) agitation launched sometime ago. Rather than wait for six months, the Government should immediately ban the lottery since it would only fetch a negligible revenue of Rs. 20 crore till March in comparison to the State Government's budget of Rs. 24,000 crore. "Why should the Government play with the lives of the poor knowing fully well that the poor are prone to gambling. The previous Janata Dal Government had imposed a ban on all lotteries, including the single-digit lottery and matka. Instead of inculcating the habit of savings among the poor, the Government is encouraging them to spend." He said that in a recent case reported from Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district, a 24-year-old youth borrowed over Rs. five lakh from his friends and neighbours and, having lost all the money in online lottery, committed suicide. There were similar cases in the rural areas of the State. In the urban areas, even schoolboys and girls were addicted to online lottery, leave alone unemployed youth and adults, he said. The Debtors Relief Act had not yielded results since it was difficult to implement and, consequently, moneylenders were going scot-free despite charging exorbitant interest rates. Mr. Sindhia also demanded a White Paper on the drought relief works undertaken by the Government so far and said either the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, or the President of the BJP State unit, H.N. Ananth Kumar, was lying, particularly with regard to the funds and foodgrains allocated by the Centre to the State. While the Chief Minister maintained that the Centre had not provided appropriate assistance to the State, Mr. Ananth Kumar said that the foodgrains and funds granted to the State was worth around Rs. 1,500 crore. The JD(S) leader said that with the State Government having declared 130 taluks drought affected, it should have spent at least Rs. 10 crore on each taluk in the current year alone. However, there was hardly any expenditure in most of the drought-affected taluks and relief works had come to a grinding halt, he charged. In Kanakapura taluk, which has been hit by drought for the past three years, the State Government had spent only Rs. 1.5 crore in three years and same was the case in most places, he alleged. The people had a right to know the truth about the relief works undertaken by the Government and the expenditure incurred on them. "The funds allocated by the Centre have either been misappropriated or diverted for other programmes," he charged. On the "Janaspandana" programme undertaken by the Chief Minister over the past four days, Mr. Sindhia said, "The Chief Minister is now directly facing the wrath of the people who turned anti-Government long ago. The `Janaspandana' is nothing more than a street drama. Instead of meeting the families of the farmers who had committed suicide or the people in distress, the Congress party was busy conducting roadside meetings, apparently with an eye on the coming elections," he added.
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