Company writes to CM on lottery fiasco

SHILLONG: Pooja Fortune Private Ltd, a company with interest in lottery business, has once again written to Chief Minister Conrad Sangma apprising him of the “recent developments” in Meghalaya State Lotteries.
In its letter dated December 19, Pooja Fortune urged the chief minister “to direct the state officials to desist from conducting any backdoor negotiations with M/s NV International and also desist from directly awarding them 6/12 draws out of the 24 permissible lottery draws per day without floating any tender”.
Pooja Fortune, who had earlier written in September, said Meghalaya got into an agreement with NV International in 2005 for distributing paper lotteries. The original tenure of the said agreement was for three years from the date of the first draw or within a period of 90 days from the date of signing the agreement, whichever was earlier.
“However, after execution of the said agreement, M/s NV International immediately started violating the various clauses of the said agreement. In fact, it started defaulting in revenues,” Pooja Fortune reiterated.
“While the matter thus remained pending, the Director, Meghalaya State Lotteries on 30.11.2017 had issued a Notice Inviting Tender (NIT) for appointment of Distributor(s) of Meghalaya State Lotteries for both paper and online formats,” it added.
The government had written to NV International to pay dues of over Rs 4 crore (Rs 4,43,44,800) but the company filed a case against the state demanding over Rs 25.88 crore. After filing writ petitions, the government withdrew the earlier tender floated and now the government is trying to award contract to NV International without floating tender, according to Pooja.