New Delhi, Mar 30 (IANS): Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Monday announced to extend the validity of pre-paid packs of over 8 crore subscribers till April 17, in view of the coronavirus crisis and the resultant nationwide lockdown.

"Airtel has extended the pre-paid pack validity for over 80 million customers till April 17, 2020. All these customers will continue to get incoming calls on their Airtel mobile numbers even after the validity of their plan is exhausted," the company said in a statement.

Further, Airtel will credit an additional Rs 10 of talk time in the pre-paid accounts of all these 8 crore customers to enable them to make calls or send SMS.

The benefits will be available to users in the next 48 hours, it said.

"These 80 million customers effectively cover all under-privileged households on the Airtel network. These special measures will particularly benefit migrant workers and daily wage earners who may have been impacted due to the nationwide lockdown to combat COVID-19," the statement said.

Shashwat Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer, Bharti Airtel said: "In this difficult hour of fighting off the threat of COVID-19, Airtel is committed to ensuring that all people remain connected without any disruptions. And for this objective, it is critical to take care of the under-privileged daily wage earners of our country, whose lives have been disrupted due to the lockdown".