NEW DELHI: More than 1,500 telecommunication towers in Punjab were damaged by farmers protesting against the three farm laws, disrupting services in some pockets, sources said.
The power supply to the towers that carry telecommunications signals was broken and cables were cut in various parts of the state as farmers expressed their anger at the infrastructure owned by the multi-billion dollar company Mukesh Ambani. Jio as they saw him together with infrastructure mogul Gautam Adani as the main beneficiaries of the new laws.
Neither the Ambani Reliance group nor the Adani companies are in the business of purchasing food grains from farmers.
“As of yesterday 1,411 towers were damaged and today the count exceeded 1,500,” said a source with knowledge of the matter.
At Jalandhar, some bundles of Jio’s fiber cables were also burned.
Jio has more than 9,000 towers in the state.
Another source said that the most common way to damage telecommunication towers was to cut off the power supply.
In at least one case, the generator at a tower site was physically removed and allegedly donated to a local gurudwara.
Videos of Jio employees threatened and forced to flee have gone viral.
The attacks have impacted telecommunications services and operators are struggling to maintain services in the absence of action by law enforcement agencies, the source said.
Punjab’s prime minister appealed on Friday to protesting farmers not to cause annoyance to the general public with such actions and to continue to exercise the same restraint they had shown during the past months of unrest.
Sources said that state police have so far failed to act against the telecommunications towers they damage and even FIRs have not been registered in most cases.
According to the Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA), a registered body of telecommunications infrastructure providers, at least 1,600 towers have been vandalized.
These also include common access infrastructure.
Hundreds of farmers have been protesting on the borders of Delhi for over a month against the three farm laws that they say they would use at the end of the purchase based on the minimum support price (MSP) of agricultural products such as wheat and rice.
The government has denied the arrests, saying that MSP will continue and that the new laws only provide farmers with an alternative market to sell their produce.
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