Coldplay concert: HC rejects PIL seeking guidelines against black marketing, ticket scalping

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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 Coldplay's concert in Navi Mumbai this month, PTI reported.

A 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 interfere.

"This 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 said.

The 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 reported.

"However, 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 said.

It allowed the petitioner to make a representation before the competent authority.

The 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 on.

Vyas, in the petition, claimed that such irregularity and illegality were witnessed when tickets for the Coldplay's India's concert were made available on the online platform BookMyShow, PTI reported.

It 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 Dosanjh.

The petitioner claimed that organisers and ticketing partners exploit fans by listing the tickets on secondary websites at sky-high prices.

He claimed such irregularities were seen last month when tickets were sold on BookMyShow for the Coldplay concert scheduled this month.

"The sale of online tickets was apparently manipulated by the BookMyShow platform in such a manner that even before mid-noon 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 alleged.

It 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 prices.

Vyas filed a complaint about this matter with the municipal police's economic offences section last year, and an investigation is currently underway.

The lawyer said that such illegal acts violated people's fundamental right to have equal opportunity to public entertainment, PTI reported.

The PIL said, "The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 mandate e-commerce entities to ensure fair and non-deceptive practices. However, in the absence of effective regulations in the ticketing sector, entities such as BookMyShow are not complying with the rules."

(With PTI inputs)