New Delhi, India

The Delhi High Court issued a notice to Zomato, the Central Government of India and other websites and individuals seeking guidelines to curb ticket scalping or ticket reselling which is usually taking place illegally in response to several public interest litigations. 

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The court issued notices to the Centre through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), Ministries of Finance, and Information and Broadcasting.

Why can't anyone buy tickets for the Diljit Dosanjh concert from original seller?

This action was taken after several reports came up where tickets for several shows for Indian singer and performer Diljit Dosanjh were reported to have been sold out within minutes. Those same tickets were then available on different websites at nine of ten times the actual cost of the ticket.

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Also Read: Diljit Dosanjh adds new shows for sold out Dil-Luminati tour

This was happening for Diljit Dosanjh’s ongoing Dil-Luminati Tour. The same also happened for Coldplay concerts where people found themselves scouting black markets for tickets as the official websites were sold out within minutes of opening the ticket sales.

Court takes action on receiving PILs

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One of the petitioners is Rohan Gupta, a Delhi resident, who submitted that ticket sellers create an artificial scarcity of tickets by reselling tickets at prices as high as eight or nine times the original price. As he himself wanted to attend the concert, he had to buy a ticket on one of the websites selling the tickets since the official ticket partner had nothing left with them. 

He highlighted that Diljit Dosanjh’s concert tickets were sold out within three minutes of going on sale.

The Centre submitted before the bench of Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela that court directions for guidelines are not required as the Act is covered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) section 112 which covers petty organised crime such as theft and unauthorised sale of tickets.

Chief Justice Manmohan, however, orally remarked that the petitioner’s grievance is not just confined to the unauthorised sale of tickets but also regarding the hoarding of tickets.

According to the petitioner, ticket seller and the reselling platforms had “acted in collusion by artificially creating demand and scarcity of the tickets…and simultaneously having them available for purchases at much higher prices on platforms of the (resale tickets platforms)….and later declaring such tickets purchased by the general public including the petitioner, as invalid and thereby denying entry to the event of such ticket holder, or it is the (resale ticketing platforms) who have played fraud upon the general public by selling and guaranteeing the tickets of the ‘Dil- Luminati Tour’, for which the (reselling tickets platforms) were not authorised in the first place as (Zomato) is the only Official Ticketing Partner of ‘Dil-Luminati Tour’”.

The court will consider the matter next on February 18.