Punit Khandelia quits HT joins Prabhat Khabar

He will now join as Head of Ad Sales for Prabha Khabar. Khandelia will be responsible for its Bihar operations. Khandelia has been a part of Hindustan Times since 1993 and was given additional responsibilities of a Senior Manager and held the position from 2002 to 2005

Prabhat Khabar has editions at Muzaffarpur, Patna and Bhagalpur city and its Bihar has been its current thrust area for the daily. It has rolled the first ever all color editions of Bihar from Muzaffarpur and Bhagalpur cities of Bihar. Its Patna centre is also being up-graded and it is all set to go all color shortly, which will make Prabhat Khabar to be the first Hindi daily to be all color from all its three centers in Bihar.

Its Bhagalpur edition, which is also more aggressively priced and with higher pagination than the competition there and had preceded an extensive carpet field survey of over 45,000 households in the city of Bhagalpur where the reading households were offered very lucrative subscription offer. The daily, thus booked four thousand more copies than what is being sold by its two nearest competitions individually. Bhagalpur is the first city where Prabhat Khabar has taken an early lead and hopes to build a comprehensive lead further.

Prabhat Khabar has today launched an extensive editorial 'cum- ground activities to mobilize public opinion for grant of special state status to Bihar. The daily has drafted a pledge seeking such grant from central Government, which will first be signed by the Chief Minister Mr. Nitish Kumar and thereafter the entire council of his ministers, MPs, MLAs and MLC would also sign this demand. Thereafter three mobile vans will be sent in all the 38 districts of Bihar seeking signatures of the masses. This signature campaign targets to seek a minimum of 10 Mn signatures from the people of Bihar and will culminate on March 21, 2011. On March 22, the state will celebrate the state's entry into 100th year of formation. Prabhat Khabar has made extensive ground cum editorial activities. Prabhat Khabar has currently unleashed a social campaign, releasing one ad everyday for past one as a build up to this celebrations. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]