Nagaland State Lotteries

What the Nagaland State Lotteries are

Nagaland State Lotteries is the state government's paper lottery operation, run by the Directorate of State Lotteries from Kohima. Its best-known products are the Dear draws: a family of weekly lotteries named after the day they are played, such as Dear Legend Monday, Dear Prestige Tuesday and Dear Laxmi Sunday. Tickets are sold through agents and shops in several states, and the results are published online, with some draws streamed live from Nagaland¹.

The Dear series is organized under the joint paper lottery arrangements of the northeastern states, and the formal draw rules for the weekly Dear games are gazetted by the Directorate of Sikkim State Lotteries, with the physical draws conducted in Gangtok. Tickets are sold across a wide footprint that includes Nagaland itself². If you are new to Indian state lotteries generally, start with our page on the India lottery.

Lotteries are one of the few forms of legal gambling in Nagaland. The state has also given legal recognition to skill-based gaming such as poker, bridge, rummy and fantasy sports under its 2015 online gaming law, which makes it one of the more permissive states in India⁵. For the wider picture, see gambling in India.

Dear draws: the weekly schedule at a glance

The Dear weekly lotteries are named for the day on which each draw is held. Each ticket carries a series letter and a five-digit number, and prizes are paid on matches ranging from the full number down to the last four digits. The gazette schedules cover seven weekly Dear draws, one for every day of the week²:

Ticket price: ₹7

Top prize: ₹1,00,00,000

The Sunday draws are also shown live on the Nagaland lotteries website: Dear Laxmi Sunday was streamed live from Nagaland at 8 PM on the draw date¹. The Sikkim live-draw page likewise carries Dear Empire Sunday live from Gangtok from 6 PM onwards⁶. In practice, players follow the results online the same evening, and winning numbers are published on the official sites shortly after each draw.

Dear Legend Monday: tickets, prizes and draw details

Dear Legend Monday is the flagship Monday draw and a good illustration of how the weekly Dear games work. The maximum retail price is ₹7 per ticket, and up to 2 crore tickets are printed for each draw, numbered across serials 80 to 99 and ten series (A, B, C, D, E, G, H, J, K and L), with ticket numbers running from 00000 to 99999 in each series².

The prize ladder is deep, so small wins are common even though the headline prize is huge. The full structure for the current scheme, in force from the 41st draw on July 13, 2026 onwards, is²:

Sellers and agents also receive a small commission prize at every rank, which is why the total prize money on offer, ₹7,41,98,500, is larger than the sum of the player prizes alone. The draw is held every Monday from 6:00 PM onwards at the Directorate of Sikkim State Lotteries, Deorali, Gangtok².

The fifth prize is the one most players actually hit: it pays ₹120 for matching the last four digits, and because the winning four-digit combination is drawn 100 times across the series, up to two million tickets can win at that rank in a single draw.

Bumper lotteries: the Ganesh Chaturthi example

Alongside the weekly games, the Dear brand runs seasonal bumper lotteries with much bigger prizes and correspondingly dearer tickets. The Dear Ganesh Chaturthi Bumper 2026 is a typical example. Tickets cost ₹500 each, with 6 lakh tickets printed, giving a gross value of ₹30 crore. The draw was held on September 19, 2026, from 6:00 PM onwards, at the Directorate of Sikkim State Lotteries in Deorali, Gangtok³.

The prize table shows how a bumper scales up³:

The total prize money on offer was ₹8,16,22,000. Two features are worth noting. First, the first prize is guaranteed to the public and is drawn only from sold tickets, so the top prize is actually awarded even if every ticket is not bought. Second, only sold tickets are eligible for prizes at any rank. No tickets may be sold after the draw begins or after distributors report their unsold stock³.

Bumper tickets for this draw were sold in West Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and Sikkim, and prize money for taxable prizes is paid by the Directorate of Sikkim State Lotteries in Gangtok³. For the Maharashtra equivalents, see our page on Maharashtra bumper lotteries.

Prize structure and payout percentage

The Dear weekly games return a defined share of sales as prizes. For Dear Legend Monday, the payout is set at 52.999% of the gross value of the tickets, which works out to the ₹7,41,98,500 prize pool against the ₹14 crore gross value of the full print run². That is a generous ratio by Indian state lottery standards, and it is fixed in the gazette, so it does not vary from draw to draw.

The structure is deliberately top-heavy at the headline level but broad at the bottom. One ticket wins ₹1 crore, but millions of tickets can win ₹120 or ₹250. The seller prizes at each rank, from ₹5,00,000 for the seller of the first-prize ticket down to ₹10 at the fifth rank, come out of the same pool and are what make retail agents willing to stock the tickets².

The bumper games work the same way but with a flatter top: the Ganesh Chaturthi Bumper spread ₹8,16,22,000 across seven prize ranks, with the seventh prize alone reaching up to 30,000 winners at ₹1,000 each³.

Where tickets are sold and who may buy them

Dear weekly tickets are sold in West Bengal, Punjab, Sikkim, Maharashtra, Meghalaya and Nagaland². The Ganesh Chaturthi Bumper was sold in West Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and Sikkim³. In practice, you buy them from street-level lottery agents and licensed shops, often the same stalls that sell newspapers and stationery, and each ticket states where it may legally be sold.

Anyone in a state where the tickets are on sale may buy them, including visitors; there is no residency requirement for purchasing a paper lottery ticket in India. What matters is where the ticket was bought, because claims are processed through the lottery directorates. Claimants within Nagaland get their claims paid through the Directorate of State Lotteries, P. R. Hill Junction, Kohima 797 001⁴.

A practical point: buy your ticket in the state where you can conveniently claim, and keep it somewhere safe. The original ticket is the only proof of a win.

How the draws are conducted

The weekly Dear draws are conducted by a mechanical method based on random technology, in a way that is visibly transparent, in the presence of judges appointed by the government². The bumper draws follow the same procedure: the Ganesh Chaturthi Bumper was drawn mechanically, based on random technology, before judges appointed by the Government of Sikkim³.

The draws take place at the Directorate of Sikkim State Lotteries, Deorali, Gangtok 737102, and results are published the same evening². Several draws are also streamed live: the Nagaland lotteries site carries Dear Laxmi Sunday live from 8 PM, and the Sikkim site carries Dear Empire Sunday live from 6 PM¹. Watching the live draw is how most players first learn whether their ticket has won.

Claiming a prize: documents, deadlines and payment

The claim window is short: all prizes must be claimed within 30 days of the draw date, and prizes not claimed in time are forfeited⁴. Every winner of a prize exceeding ₹10,000 on a single ticket must submit a claim in the prescribed form⁴.

For a claim above ₹10,000, you need⁴:

• The original ticket, signed on its reverse side
• A self-declaration in the form of an affidavit, made on ₹20 stamp paper or e-stamp paper
• Your PAN card
• One photo identity proof
• Three passport-sized photographs taken within the last three months
• A canceled check leaf for the bank account where the money should go
• Photocopies of the documents, attested by a First-Class Magistrate or Notary Public

Fill in the official claim form exactly as printed. The rules state plainly that no changes may be made to the format, and a form with alterations will be returned to the winner unpaid⁴.

Payment is made by RTGS or demand draft, after the Directorate verifies that the ticket is genuine and deducts all taxes liable on the winnings⁴. Claimants within Nagaland are paid through the Directorate of State Lotteries in Kohima⁴. Submitting a PAN card copy is mandatory for the income tax deduction on any lottery prize above ₹10,000, and be aware that the directorate publishes the name, address and photograph of winners of prizes above ₹10,000 in newspapers and other media⁷. For how winnings are taxed overall, see our page on tax on gambling winnings in India.

Two warnings from the rulebook are worth repeating. Tampered tickets are not entitled to any prize, and a person claiming with a tampered ticket can be sued⁷. And the government is not liable to pay on tickets lost in transit, defaced, laminated or mutilated⁴. In other words, the original ticket is everything: sign it, photograph it, and do not laminate it.

How Dear compares with Maharashtra's lotteries

Maharashtra runs the other big state lottery family you will see alongside Dear tickets, and the two are quite different products. Maharashtra's Ganeshlaxmi weekly lotteries cost ₹10 a ticket including GST, with ten series of tickets numbered 0000 to 9999 in each, sold in books of 100 and only within Maharashtra⁸. Its older weekly schemes were smaller still: the Monday Somvar lottery cost ₹50 with a first prize of ₹8 lakh, and the Tuesday Mangalvar lottery cost ₹15⁹.

The contrast with Dear Legend Monday is stark. For ₹7, the Dear game offers a ₹1 crore first prize because it prints 2 crore tickets across six states, while a Maharashtra weekly spreads a much smaller pool over a single state. The bumper comparison is similar: Maharashtra's Diwali Bumper 2025 offered a ₹1 crore first prize, against ₹3 crore for the Dear Ganesh Chaturthi Bumper³.

Claiming also differs. Maharashtra gives you 90 days from the draw date, against 30 days for Dear prizes, and its prizes up to ₹10,000 can simply be collected from the retail agent who sold the ticket, with larger claims going to the Deputy Director, Maharashtra State Lottery, Vashi, Navi Mumbai¹⁰. Dear prizes above ₹10,000, by contrast, always go through the prescribed claim form with attested documents. If you are buying in Maharashtra, check which scheme's ticket you are holding before you assume either rule. See also our pages on Maharashtra monthly lotteries and Sikkim State Lotteries.