THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even the dreaded pandemic can’t kill Keralites’ hope for a better tomorrow, it seems. The state lotteries department is getting an encouraging response from people after it restarted the weekly raffles on Wednesday. All 60 lakh tickets of Akshaya, the Wednesday’s lottery, were sold off before the lucky winners were picked in the afternoon. The profit for the government is Rs 1.18 crore.
After a gap of two months during the lockdown, lottery sales had resumed on May 21. The tickets sold then were of eight draws postponed due to the shutdown. Over 60 lakh tickets of each weekly lottery were bought on average, leaving about 30 per cent unsold. When restarting weekly lotteries on July 1, the department chose to play safe by printing 60 lakh tickets each. “Ticket sales for this week’s six lotteries started in the last week of June. There was a steady rise in demand and all tickets were sold off. Hence, for the next week, we will up the number of tickets for each lottery by six lakh,” said an officer.