Feature
After 20 years Darshan Lal becomes first Hindu to enter Pak cabinet
Pakistan: It is surprising that after a along period of twenty years for the very first time, Pakistan’s Cabinet will have a Hindu member. President Mamnoon Hussain on Friday sworn-in the new Cabinet led by interim prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, which also included Dr Darshan Lal, a PML-N legislator from Sindh province.
According to media, Lal was allotted the responsibility of overseeing co-ordination between the four provinces of Pakistan: Punjab, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Lal used to be a doctor in Sindh’s Ghotki district. Sindh is home to about 90 percent of Pakistan’s Hindu population. He was elected to the National Assembly for the second time under PML-N’s minority quota, the report noted.
Pakistan has had a two Hindu Cabinet ministers in the past. While Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Scheduled Caste legislator from Bengal, was Pakistan’s first law minister, Rana Chander Singh, a veteran leader from Umerkot, a Hindu-dominated district in Sindh, served as a Cabinet minister under Benazir Bhutto.
The new Cabinet largely retained old faces but some new leaders were included as ministers and ministers of state. There are 28 federal ministers and 19 state ministers in the new Cabinet, almost double Sharif’s 25-strong Cabinet when he swept the 2013 polls.
Khawaja Asif was appointed as the country’s first full-time foreign minister since 2013, when the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party came to power.
Ahsan Iqbal was appointed the interior minister and former trade minister Khurrum Dastigir Khan was given the defence portfolio.
However, the powerful former interior minister Nisar Ali Khan was excluded from the new Cabinet after he refused to join due to differences with the party leadership.
The transition to the new Cabinet happened a week after Sharif’s ouster on 28 July. Abbasi, a die-hard Nawaz Sharif loyalist, was on Tuesday elected as the interim prime minister by the National Assembly. Shehbaz Sharif will take over from Abbasi after he is elected to the National Assembly in a by-election.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court had ordered Nawaz to step down and ruled that graft cases be filed against him and his children over the Panama Papers scandal. It was the third time the 67-year-old veteran politician’s term as premier has been cut short.
Nawaz was disqualified from holding his office as the judges ruled that he had been dishonest to parliament and the courts could not be deemed fit for office. Finance minister Ishaq Dar and captain Safdar, who is a Member of National Assembly (MNA), were also disqualified from office.
The State Scores Extra High on Gaming-Friendly Industry Index
Meghalaya scored 92.85 out of 100 possible points in a Gaming Industry Index and proved to be India’s most gaming-friendly state following its recent profound legislation changes over the field allowing land-based and online gaming, including games of chance, under a licensing regime.
The index by the UK India Business Council (UKIBC) uses a scale of 0 to 100 to measure the level of legalisation on gambling and betting achieved by a state based on the scores over a set of seven different games – lottery, horse racing, betting on sports, poker, rummy, casino and fantasy sports
Starting from February last year, Meghalaya became the third state in India’s northeast to legalise gambling and betting after Sikkim and Nagaland. After consultations with the UKIBC, the state proceeded with the adoption of the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Act, 2021 and the nullification of the Meghalaya Prevention of Gambling Act, 1970. Subsequently in December, the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021 were notified and came into force.
All for the Tourists
The move to legalise and license various forms of offline and online betting and gambling in Meghalaya is aimed at boosting tourism and creating jobs, and altogether raising taxation revenues for the northeastern state. At the same time, the opportunities to bet and gamble legally will be reserved only for tourists and visitors.
“We came out with a Gaming Act and subsequently framed the Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021. The government will accordingly issue licenses to operate games of skill and chance, both online and offline,” said James P. K. Sangma, Meghalaya State Law and Taxation Minister speaking in the capital city of Shillong. “But the legalized gambling and gaming will only be for tourists and not residents of Meghalaya,” he continued.
To be allowed to play, tourists and people visiting the state for work or business purposes will have to prove their non-resident status by presenting appropriate documents, in a process similar to a bank KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure.
Meghalaya Reaches Out to a Vast Market
With 140 millions of people in India estimated to bet regularly on sports, and a total of 370 million desi bettors around prominent sporting events, as per data from one of the latest reports by Esse N Videri, Meghalaya is set to reach out and take a piece of a vast market.
Estimates on the financial value of India’s sports betting market, combined across all types of offline channels and online sports and cricket predictions and betting platforms, speak about amounts between $130 and $150 billion (roughly between ₹9.7 and ₹11.5 lakh crore).
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Delhi are shown to deliver the highest number of bettors and Meghalaya can count on substantial tourists flow from their betting circles. The sports betting communities of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are also not to be underestimated.
Among the sports, cricket is most popular, registering 68 percent of the total bet count analyzed by Esse N Videri. Football takes second position with 11 percent of the bets, followed by betting on FIFA at 7 percent and on eCricket at 5 percent. The last position in the Top 5 of popular sports for betting in India is taken by tennis with 3 percent of the bet count.
Local Citizens will Still have Their Teer Betting
Meghalaya residents will still be permitted to participate in teer betting over arrow-shooting results. Teer is a traditional method of gambling, somewhat similar to a lottery draw, and held under the rules of the Meghalaya Regulation of the Game of Arrow Shooting and the Sale of Teer Tickets Act, 2018.
Teer includes bettors wagering on the number of arrows that reach the target which is placed about 50 meters away from a team of 20 archers positioned in a semicircle.
The archers shoot volleys of arrows at the target for ten minutes, and players place their bets choosing a number between 0 and 99 trying to guess the last two digits of the number of arrows that successfully pierce the target.
If, for example, the number of hits is 256, anyone who has bet on 56 wins an amount eight times bigger than their wager.
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