In a mad rush to own a top-of-the-line dream car, there was chaos at the Garuda Mall, for the ‘Hands on Sx4’ contest on Saturday morning.

Order was restored after Ashok Nagar police picked up few over-enthusiastic youths who landed at the mall to participate in the contest. They raised slogans and vented their anger after they felt cheated. Both the police and the organisers summed up the incident as ‘unfortunate’ and said, 'a section of the public got confused with regard to the rules and regulations of the contest'.

Arun, a participant told Deccan Herald, “After watching the TV, we landed at the Mall to take part in the contest. After coming here they (organisers) are coming out with different version. Now, We feel cheated.”After the ugly scenes were witnessed, the organisers made a few changes and introduced a lucky dip concept. The public reluctantly left the place. For the Sx4 contest, participants were supposed to place their palm on the car (Sx4 Maruti) for around 35 hours or more to win. The contest was scheduled to kick start from 11 am on Saturday, going on till 9 pm on Sunday. The organisers erred in making clear to the public, the eligibility for taking part in the contest. According to the organisers, an FM radio channel had picked 16 participants (through their own programmes) and five mall customers. In all, around 21 people were eligible to participate. But the same had not been intimated through the publicity campaign in a section of the visual medium. At the end of the day, the contest took off with around 27 participants - six from luck dip, five shoppers and 16 from the radio channel.
Uday Garudachar, one of the promoters of the Mall told this paper, “We have just provided the venue. The organisers are the car manufacturers and a  radio channel. There was a communication gap and we have sorted out the matter.”