Kolkata, Sep 12 (IANS) Former West Bengal finance minister and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Asim Dasgupta Monday alleged that by imposing charge on online lottery the Trinamool Congress-led government has, in effect, legalised it.


“The present state government has introduced charge on all kinds of lotteries, including online lotteries. By doing that, in effect, online lottery has become legalised. It will have a very adverse effect in our state,” Dasgupta said at a press conference here.

Stating that when the CPI-M-led Left Front government was in power in the state, it wanted to stop online lottery because it has an addictive effect, he said they had taken steps to stop online lottery during 2004-05.

"There was a court case... and now the case is pending with the Supreme Court,” he said.

He alleged that with the introduction of charges on online lottery, the case was being weakened.

Demanding that most of the steps regarding e-governance in tax administration in the state had been taken by the Left Front government, Dasgupta said it should have been mentioned by the present government before taking measures in this sphere.

“Recently in a statement before the press, the present state government has mentioned about e-governance in the sphere of tax administration. It should be pointed out that all important steps in e-governance were introduced more than a year and half ago by the Left Front government regarding e-registration of the bills, e-submission of the return and also e-payments,” he stated.

The Mamata Banerjee-led government in July announced an e-governance scheme to help the small and medium enterprises sector of the state to file e-return of sales tax and also enable online refund of value added tax (VAT) through the electronic clearing schemes.

“These steps had already been taken (by the LF government) and 90 percent of dealers have already benefited from this,” the former finance minister said.

“It should have been mentioned, otherwise it does not seem correct,” he added.