New Nepal casino targets Indians in UP, Bihar

KATHMANDU - While Nepal’s mainstream casino industry, with six of its eight casinos based in the capital, is going through troubled times, a ninth one has begun to operate in a border district, hoping to draw gamblers from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states across the border.

Nepalgunj, the main transport hub for Nepal’s mid- and farwestern districts and adjoining Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich town, has become the first town in the Terai plains to open a casino.

Happy Hour Casino, which kicked off Wednesday, is also the first that doesn’t have a five-star host. As per Nepal’s laws, only five-star hotels can lease out space to casinos.

But Surendra Bahadur Singh, managing director of Happy Hour, hopes to circumvent that.

Just as Hotel Sneha, from the premises of which the new casino is being run, is a three-star hotel instead of the mandatory five-star, Happy Hour, Singh says, is a mini casino without all the games offered by the bigger casinos.

It has started out primarily with electronic roulette and slot machines and can accommodate 80 players in one go.

Nepalgunj is closer to Uttar Pradesh cities like Lucknow and even the Indian capital New Delhi by road and Singh hopes to cash in on the regular flow of Indians coming to Nepal for tourism, business, work and family reasons.

One major reason why Kathmandu’s casinos are wilting is due to the drop in the number of Indian gamblers now that there are casinos closer home in India, like in Goa and Sikkim.

Nepal’s laws do not allow Nepalis to gamble at the casinos and a recent intensified crackdown by police on the capital’s casinos has resulted in negative publicity for them.

Revenue officials are also hounding the casinos, most of whom owe millions of rupees in tax. Besides, the casinos are also racked by union trouble with the major parties, especially the opposition Maoist party, trying to increase control.

The Nepalgunj casino indicates an end to the earlier monopoly enjoyed over the casino industry by the Nepal Recreation Centre, an organisation that, after a long dispute, was finally claimed by an Indian, Rakesh Wadhwa.

Today, there are three players running the industry with Happy Hour’s Singh becoming the fourth.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)