London: Sugal & Damani, the Indian lottery major that lost its bid earlier in August to run the UK National Lottery, is likely to challenge the decision of the National Lottery Commission to award the licence to the current operator Camelot. The Delhi-based Sugal & Damani was the sole rival bidder and had reportedly spent 10 million pounds on its bid. Camelot was awarded the licence to run the lottery for 10 years from 2009. This is the second time in recent years that the commission has been criticised for its choice of company to run the multi-billion pound National Lottery. In 2000, a bid by Richard Branson's 'People's Lottery' was ignored, also in favour of Camelot.

The 2000 decision was also challenged in court. Branson said at the time: "We told the commission the basis on which we would bid, but with the structure they used it was inevitable that Camelot would win. The government needs to conduct an urgent post-mortem to ensure this farce is not allowed to happen again." According to Kamlesh Vijay, chief executive of Sugal & Damani, the company was considering seeking a judicial review of the commission's decision to award the licence to Camelot. The decision, he said, meant that the process had become a "licence to under perform".

Sugal & Damani has reportedly written to the commission to review its decision, but the commission had refused to do so. A commission spokesperson said: "After a rigorous evaluation process, the commissioners unanimously agreed to select Camelot as the preferred bidder and Sugal & Damani as a reserve bidder and this decision has not changed."

As part of the 2000 bid, Camelot had claimed that it could raise 15 billion pounds for good causes over seven years. It had so far raised 8.5 billion pounds and was now expected to finish the licence in 2009 after raising between 10.5 and 11 billion pounds. Vijay told The Guardian that this missed target should have been taken into account by the commission when considering Camelot's projections for the recently decided lottery licence. Asked if the company would take its objections to the courts, Vijay said: "We are considering all our options."

He added: "They are short by about 30 percent of their own quoted figures. It (the commission) is not willing to give a chance to another company that has a track record that is not failing in India. We feel they have rewarded underperformance. "The commission fails to justify how Camelot will be more generous when it is failing on its own targets." He claimed that, after stripping out unclaimed winnings and other exceptional contributions, Camelot had never returned more than 26 percent of sales to good causes during its 13 years of running the National Lottery.

The commission spokesperson pointed out that the competition for the lottery licence precluded commissioners from taking into account past performance of bidders. This was intended to provide a level playing field for new entrants. (IANS)