NCP, MNS activists protest insult to National Anthem by mobile company in Pune

PUNE - The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Maharashtra Navanirmana Sena (MNS) activists vandalised the office of a private mobile service provider company here on Tuesday in protest of relaying obscene jokes through sms to its subscribers allegedly insulting the National Anthem.

The indecent message was sent by Idea Cellular services in which the punching contained a deprecating reference to the National Anthem.

Members of the youth wing of MNS painted the board of the Idea Company with black paint and raised anti-Idea company slogans and also pelted stones at the office.

Meanwhile, Dinesh Upmanya, the head of administration for Idea Cellular Company in Maharashtra and Goa has apologised for the sms texts and conceded the ‘partial’ and ‘indirect’ involvement of the company.

“The company condemns the indecent SMS; this message was sent due to the mistake of a vendor. We will try to rectify it so that things like this don’t happen again. There is no direct involvement of the company,” said Upmanya.

“This has happened due to vendor’s mistake. The vendor was assigned a task, which was not performed properly,” he added.

Upmanya clarified that the entire episode would be probed and strict action initiated against the assigned vendor for the irresponsible sms texts, in the guise of humour. (ANI)