Chandigarh, December 27
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s appeal to protesting farmers not to damage telecommunications infrastructure appears to have failed to deter further attacks, with more than 176 signal transmission sites vandalized in recent times. 24 hours, sources said Sunday.
While companies owned by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani do not purchase food grains from farmers, the narrative that the new farm laws will benefit them has made them easy targets, and protesting farmers in different parts of Punjab have trashed and damaged the Reliance Jio towers, breaking Connectivity
Up to 176 towers have been damaged since Saturday, said two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
This had brought the total number of damaged telecommunications tower sites to 1,411, they said.
Incidents of breaking power lines for attempts to cut the towers have been reported in different parts of Punjab, one of the sources said.
“Site administrators are slapped and abused for trying to persuade protesters not to damage the sites,” he said.
The second source said that the damaged telecommunications towers belonged to Jio and the common access infrastructure of the telecommunications industry.
“The attacks have impacted telecommunications services and operators are struggling to maintain services in the absence of action by law enforcement,” 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.
Noting that telecom connectivity had become even more critical for people amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chief Minister urged farmers to show the same discipline and sense of responsibility that they had been exercising during their protest on the Delhi border, which has completed a month, and also earlier during its turmoil in the state, “said a statement issued by the prime minister’s office.
Urging farmers not to take the law into their own hands by forcibly shutting down telecom connectivity or mistreating employees / technicians of telecom service providers, the Chief Minister said such actions are not in the interest of Punjab. and your future.
“The energetic disruption of telecommunications services due to the disruption of the power supply to mobile towers by farmers in various parts of the state not only negatively affected the studies and future prospects of students, who depend entirely on the online education, but also hampered the daily lives of people working from home due to the pandemic, ”the prime minister had said, citing the statement.
The Chief Minister’s appeal came from a request from the Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA), a registered body of telecommunications infrastructure providers, asking the state government to persuade farmers not to resort to no illegal activity in their fight for justice. . PTI
