HC rejects PIL seeking guidelines against black marketing, ticket scalping

The Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking guidelines to prevent black marketing and ticket scalping at major events in the backdrop of the alleged foul play in the ticket sale process for British band Coldplays concert in Navi Mumbai this month PTI reportedA division bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar said the concerns raised in the plea related to legislative domain and hence the court cannot interfereThis is a legislative and executive decision The court cannot interfere The government is at liberty to formulate legislation addressing the concerns raised in the petition the court saidThe bench further said that in the absence of a clear statutory framework mandating the reliefs sought in the petition it cannot order legislation to be enacted or laws to be amended in a particular manner PTI reportedHowever in the event that the competent authority of the government considers it necessary they remain at liberty to take appropriate legislative or executive measures to address the concerns highlighted by the petitioner the court saidIt allowed the petitioner to make a representation before the competent authorityThe petitioner Amit Vyas an advocate alleged that there are several irregularities and illegalities during the sale of tickets for major events such as concerts live shows and so onVyas in the petition claimed that such irregularity and illegality were witnessed when tickets for the Coldplays Indias concert were made available on the online platform BookMyShow PTI reportedIt also said that such illegal means were widespread during the IPL matches the cricket World Cup matches in 2023 and the concerts of singers Taylor Swift and Diljit DosanjhThe petitioner claimed that organisers and ticketing partners exploit fans by listing the tickets on secondary websites at skyhigh pricesHe claimed such irregularities were seen last month when tickets were sold on BookMyShow for the Coldplay concert scheduled this monthThe sale of online tickets was apparently manipulated by the BookMyShow platform in such a manner that even before midnoon on the day the tickets were made available people got logged out and were not allowed to access the website to purchase tickets the PIL allegedIt further claimed that within minutes the tickets for all the three shows were shown as sold out on BookMyShow though they were later found available on a secondary website at high pricesVyas filed a complaint about this matter with the municipal polices economic offences section last year and an investigation is currently underwayThe lawyer said that such illegal acts violated peoples fundamental right to have equal opportunity to public entertainment PTI reportedThe PIL said The Consumer Protection ECommerce Rules 2020 mandate ecommerce entities to ensure fair and nondeceptive practices However in the absence of effective regulations in the ticketing sector entities such as BookMyShow are not complying with the rulesWith PTI inputs