KN Balagopal, the Finance Minister of Kerala, will carry out the draw of lots of the bumper lottery for Onam at Gorky Bhavan on September 18, Sunday. The sales of the lottery tickets, which presented the highest price ever, set yet another record by selling 66.5 lakh tickets in the state.

More than 54 lakh Onam bumper lottery tickets were sold in Kerala in 2021. In the beginning, 65 lakh tickets were printed for this year but 2.5 lakh tickets more were printed again after the surge in demand. And there are only one lakh tickets more to be sold across the state till noon today. The Kerala government had given the nod to the lottery department to print as many as 90 lakh tickets.

An Onam bumper is priced at INR 500, and the agents who sell more than 1000 tickets will receive a commission of INR 99.69. The others receive INR 95 as commission and close to INR 400 will go to the government’s treasury from each ticket. Kerala had sold at least 89.06 per cent of the printed tickets by Tuesday, generating a revenue of about INR 215 crore.

“Agents, including women and physically challenged, were affected during the pandemic-forced ban and also the period before sales returned to normal. This year, agents will get Rs 96 in commission on a single ticket as against the previous year’s Rs 58. The department will print 90 lakh tickets this time. Last year, all 54 lakh tickets printed were sold out,” said the source in July this year who is close to the developments.

The draw will award a whopping INR 25 crore to the winner, which is more than two times the amount (INR 12 crore) that was offered last year although the ticket price has also been hiked to INR 500 from INR 300. The runner-up will take INR 5 crore in the lottery and the third prize will see 10 ticket holders win INR 1 crore. 

A consolation prize of INR 5 lakh will be given to nine winners. 90 ticket holders have the opportunity to win Rs 1 lakh each, and 72,000 tickets account for a prize money of INR 5000 each.