‘Protesters’ from Punjab who are ‘protesting’ against the farm bill have cut off the power supply to around 1,300 mobile towers of telecom carrier Reliance Jio in Punjab.
This has led to a massive outage of mobile and internet services and has caused inconvenience to the users who depend on the company’s network and infrastructure during the time of Covid-19 reports Financial Express.
There almost 9000 Reliance Jio towers in Punjab, of which around 1,300 have been cut off. To add to the woes of the people, the protesters have gone as far as to cut down the fibre itself and it may take days to fix the problem not to mention the problem faced by businesses and lakhs school students who depend on the internet for there education.
Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh who supports the farm agitation has appealed to the protesters to exercise restraint and to not cause inconvenience to the general public. However, no legal action has yet been taken against the protesters by Punjab Police or Punjab Government which has emboldened them.
Singh had said, “Forceful disruption of telecom services due to snapping of power supply to mobile towers by farmers in several parts of the state is not only adversely affecting the studies and future prospects of students, who are dependent entirely on online education, but also hampering the daily life of people working from home due to the pandemic.”
Singh had also added, “Further, the disruption of telecom services would also seriously affect the state’s already disturbed economy.”
The Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) have asked the State Government of Punjab to persuade the protesters to not to resort to any unlawful activity.
It must also be noted that it was the same Congress and all the left secular parties who had protested when internet access in the state of Jammu and Kashmir was cut after the abrogation of article 370. However, in the case of the protests against the farm laws they have gone ahead and disrupted telecom services.