Bombay HC To Rule On Plea Seeking Guidelines To Curb Ticket Scalping At Major Events

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday reserved its order on a PIL by a lawyer who filed a police complaint against BookMyShow and other promoters of the British band Coldplay concert in Navi Mumbai, seeking guidelines to curb black marketing and ticket scalping at major events.

Irregularities Highlighted

The PIL by Advocate Amit Vyas highlighted several irregularities and illegalities during the sale of tickets for major events like concerts and live shows. Such instances were witnessed when tickets for the Coldplay concert were made available on the BookMyShow platform on September 22 last year and sought direction to the State government and Centre to create regulations to address ticket scalping, touting and black marketing for major events. It sought setting up of a committee to frame guidelines to plug the “vacuum in law” exploited by scalpers. 

Senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas submitted that considering that the State government has imposed entertainment tax on the organisers of the event, it is its duty to ensure that the tickets are not sold in the black market and the public is not cheated. 

Plea Urges Court To Issue Directions

The plea urged the court to issue directions to booking platforms such as BookMyShow and event promoters Live Nation Entertainment, Big Tree Entertainment, and Viagogo Entertainment, among others, to cooperate with expert and monitoring panels. Dwarkadas submitted that the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police have initiated the probe but the third parties involved in the case were not cooperating. 

“It is an illegal sale as it is sold by scalpers at a high premium. There has to be some form of protection so that the public is not cheated by private entities,” said Dwarkadas. He pointed out that bots buy the tickets from secondary sellers even before the public gets access to them. These tickets which are originally prices between Rs 2,500 and Rs 12,000 are then sold for a price ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 10 lakh. The state must evolve a system to prevent such scalping in future, he added. 

A bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar suggested that Vyas approach the State with his grievance stating that it was the government's domain to frame policies. “You are inviting us to enter into the policy making domain. You are also asking us to begin a regulatory measure. We will ask the state to consider grievances.  We have our own well defined ambit,” the bench said. 

On the petitioner’s contention that the parties were not cooperating with the police, the bench said: “Investigating agencies are not so weak that if a third party is not cooperating then they cannot act… They do not know how to make them cooperate.” The bench then closed the matter for orders.