Between Preity And Deepika, Bsnl Data Cards Remain Unsold

[savramesh 37]

IndianExpress

Thursday , Jun 04, 2009 at 0345 hrs IST

Pune:

The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has a novel excuse to offer for not being able to sell thousands of data cards in Pune and nearby areas. For the last 10 days or so, it had been struggling to pull off the picture of its erstwhile brand ambassador Preity Zinta from the wrapper and replace them with that of Deepika Padukone who is currently endorsing the product.

In fact, the telecom giant was unable to sell its data cards for the last two months, ever since the data cards landed in the city, as the sale of this product with the wrong brand ambassador would have meant breach of contract. The data card based on GSM technology was launched six months ago. The USP of the data card is that one can use it on laptops to access Internet anywhere in the country.

Though the cards were made available in other parts of the country, some parts of the western zone of BSNL like Pune received the stock only two months ago.

Since then, the sale of the product was stalled by the efforts to replace the wrapper covers.

Preity Zinta’s agreement had ended in January and thus legally the BSNL could no longer use her photographs on this product. But the cards that reached the western zone of the BSNL had the photographs of the actress on all wrappers, leading to an impasse — something that has just been solved.

“We had to remove the wrappers that had photographs of Preity Zinta and only then could sell it. It would have been a breach of agreement had we sold the product with her photographs,” said Chandra Prakash, chief general manager of BSNL western zone.

However, V K Mahendra, principal general manager of BSNL, Pune, said the problem has already been sorted out.

“It is true that we could not sell the cards for around 10 days as those days were lost in removing the photographs, but the issue has been resolved and cards have been made available to customers,” he said.

Lawyer and dean of law faculty of University of Pune Sureshchandra Bhosale said generally every such agreement has a clause of compensation in case of breach.

“The one who breaches the agreement has to compensate for that. In some cases, instead of a clause of compensation a provision for referring it to arbitrator is mentioned.”

“Ultimately, the one who breaches the agreement has to pay the compensation,” he said.