BSNL moves against Infomedia over yellow pages

The Ahmedabad telecom district of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has lodged a police complaint against Infomedia India Ltd, on grounds that Infomedia India, though its agents, has been illegally replacing the BSNL telephone directory with its yellow pages.

The complaint has been lodged in the Satellite police station of Ahmedabad city.

BSNL and its authorised publishers for yellow pages, Ms Indiacom Ltd, have made available a comprehensive directory with alphabetical listing and yellow pages to its customers in Ahmedabad. The new telephone directory is exchangeable against the old telephone directory.

Infomedia India has, however, stated that this was a mistake on the part of the courier company, with which Infomedia India has a contract to replace old Infomedia yellow pages with new ones. The company says that this happened in just one case and a representation in this regard will be made to the police commissioner on Thursday.

It may be said that a few months ago, BSNL had launched the 2004 edition of its directory in association with Indiacom Ltd. The 2004 edition of the directory was launched after a gap of five years, during which, BSNL had not issued any telephone directory.

"The issue is that Infomedia India agents have been taking away the old directory from BSNL customers and replacing it with Infomedia's yellow pages. Our customers will suffer because they will receive a copy of the new directory only by exchanging it against the old copy from us," said an spokesperson of BSNL.

"BSNL Ahmedabad telecom district customers are hereby informed that nobody except BSNL can replace the telephone directory," said a BSNL statement on Wednesday.

It has also provided the number of the divisional engineer to customers, asking them to bring it to the notice of the officials in case agents of any company other than BSNL approached them to collect the BSNL directory.

Uday Bhatt, regional manager, Infomedia India, said that the company has written contracts with courier agencies, who are responsible for replacing old Infomedia yellow pages with new ones.

"By mistake, a personnel of Kajal Courier replaced an old BSNL directory with an Infomedia yellow pages in Satellite area of the city and the company had no intention to do so, nor has done anything wrong. We will meet the police commissioner on Thursday to clarify our stand," Bhatt said.