Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's appeal to protesting farmers to not damage telecom infrastructure seems to have failed to deter new attacks, with more than 150 signal transmitting sites being vandalised overnight, sources said on Sunday.
While firms belonging to billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani do not procure food grains from farmers, the narrative that new farm laws will benefit big corporates, has made them easy targets, as protesting farmers in different places in Punjab vandalised and damaged Reliance Jio towers, snapping connectivity.
As many as 151 towers have been damaged since yesterday, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.
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Incidents of snapping of power lines and attempts to axe the towers have been reported from different parts of Punjab, one of the sources said.
Another source said the telecom towers damaged belong to Jio and common access infrastructure of the telecom industry. The attacks have impacted telecom services and operators are struggling to maintain services in absence of action by law enforcement agencies, the source added.
The Punjab chief minister had on Friday had appealed to protesting farmers to not inconvenience the general public with such actions and to continue to exercise the same restraint as they had shown previously during their agitation.
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"Pointing out that telecom connectivity had become even more critical for people amid the Covid pandemic, the chief minister urged the farmers to show the same discipline and sense of responsibility which they had been exercising during their protest at the Delhi border, which has completed one month, and also earlier during their agitation in the state," a statement issued by the chief minister's office noted.
Urging the farmers to not take the law in their hands by forcibly shutting down telecom connectivity or manhandling employees/technicians of telecom service providers, the chief minister appealed to the protesters to maintain peace.
"Forceful disruption of telecom services due to snapping of power supply to mobile towers by farmers in several parts of the state has not only adversely affected the studies and future prospects of students, who are dependent entirely on online education, but has also hampered the daily life of people working from home due to the pandemic," the official statement quoted the chief minister as saying.
The chief minister's appeal comes in the wake of a request from the Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA), a registered body of telecom infrastructure providers, asking the state government to persuade the farmers to not resort to any unlawful activities during their protests.
