Agartala, July 4: Sale of tickets for the Tripura government?s online lottery has begun here after four months, triggering a major controversy and drawing protests from the Opposition.

Last year, the Tripura government had signed an agreement with Mumbai-based Videocon to reintroduce lottery in the state. This time, it is online, to mobilise additional revenue.

Videocon International, a subsidiary of Videocon, launched the lottery in February this year, agreeing to sell tickets only in Punjab, Haryana, Goa, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The subsidiary company, which will bear all the expenses of running the lottery, will pay Rs 4 crore a year in four instalments to the state government.

Though Tripura was initially kept outside the purview of ticket sales, five authorised retail outlets at Agartala began to sell tickets from July 1. Sources in the department of institutional finance, which acts as the nodal agency for running the lottery, said the outlets have been permitted to keep their counters open from 3?8 pm. Over the past four days counters remained open from morning till night selling tickets to hundreds of people, mostly rickshaw-pullers and labourers.

More retail counters will be opened in district and sub-divisional towns soon. Ticket sales will yield a commission of five to15 per cent to the retailers.

Some officials said they were not aware of counters remaining open beyond permitted hours, and added that if retailers were breaking the rules, action would be taken.

Sources said tickets were priced between Rs 5 and 15. Buyers could instantly know the results online through computers installed at the retail centres.

The lottery prize money ranges between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1 crore.

The Congress has strongly protested the re-introduction of the government-sponsored lottery. ?The CPM in West Bengal is up in arms against blatant gambling in the name of lottery and so are they in Kerala, but here the government is shamelessly encouraging gambling,? leader of the Opposition Ratanlal Nath said.

Nath referred to an earlier government lottery in Tripura which had to be called off by the then chief minister Nripen Chakraborty in the wake of a major financial scandal.

?Everyday, hundreds of poor people are losing heavily in the illegally-run private gambling and a large number of organisations including party and frontal units of the CPM met senior police officials, including the DGP, to demand drastic police action to stop this, but now the government itself is encouraging gambling,? he said.

Nath added that the lure of Rs 4 crore annually had prompted the government to launch this ?anti-people? scheme. He said if the state government did not stop running the lottery, in the state, the Congress and other Opposition parties would launch an agitation.

Reacting to Nath?s allegations, the director of institutional finance, D.R. Dutta, who is the co-ordinator of the lottery said, ?I am only implementing the decisions of the government taken at the cabinet level. I cannot do anything about it.?