GURGAON: A car trading platform’s publicity stunt involving a boat on waterlogged roads in Gurgaon sparked controversy after the company claimed that authorities had impounded the boat and imposed a Rs 50,000 challan.The claim, however, was denied by Gurgaon Traffic Police, which said no such challan had been issued.The company later issued an apology and clarified that the Rs 50,000 amount mentioned in its social media post was not a traffic fine but the cost of executing the marketing activation.The controversy began after the platform placed a blue boat on a waterlogged Gurgaon road on Saturday as part of a publicity campaign amid heavy rainfall and widespread flooding in the city.In a post on LinkedIn, the company’s head of brand and communications claimed that police had arrived within minutes and issued a Rs 50,000 challan over the stunt.“Rs 50,000. That is what it cost us to break the law in Gurgaon last week,” she wrote, describing the stunt as a joke about the city’s persistent waterlogging.The post also appeared to criticize the authorities over the recurring flooding, with the company suggesting that those responsible for the waterlogging should also face a challan.The claim prompted Gurgaon Traffic Police to clarify that it had neither received a complaint nor issued any challan in connection with the incident.Assistant Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Satyapal Yadav said, “We have received no complaint in this regard, nor have we issued any challans.”Yadav also said it could not even be established whether the photograph circulating on social media was from the current year.A senior police official said only the social media handler who made the claim could explain the circumstances behind the post.The company subsequently deleted/clarified its earlier communication and issued an apology to the Gurgaon administration, police and the public.In its clarification, the company said the Rs 50,000 figure referred to the cost of executing the marketing activation and “was not a traffic challan”. It acknowledged that no police authority had issued a challan in connection with the activity.The company said the boat stunt was intended as a light-hearted response to the flooding situation but acknowledged that placing a boat on a public road was unsafe and that the campaign had wrongly attributed an enforcement action to the police.It apologized for the confusion and said it took responsibility for the lapse, adding that internal measures had been introduced to revise its approval and external communication processes to prevent similar incidents.The company also apologized to members of the public who were misled or offended by the original post, saying the campaign was intended to create humour around a difficult situation faced by Gurgaon residents.(With PTI inputs)
