NEW DELHI: More than 1,500 telephone towers have been vandalised in the north Indian state of Punjab where farmers have taken the lead in an increasingly angry campaign against government agriculture reforms, officials said.
The action came as tens of thousands of farmers marked more than a month of protests on main roads leading into the capital, New Delhi, against new farms bills passed in September.
Farmer leaders say the new laws will lead to a takeover of the agriculture business by companies and have called for a boycott of groups such as Reliance, which owns the telecom towers, and Adani – a big player in agri-business – the two firms farmers believe have profited from the new laws at their expense.
They also fear that the government will gradually withdraw the Minimum Support Price – the price at which the government buys agricultural produce.
Farm union leaders have however, denied any role in the action against the telecom towers in Punjab state, India’s agricultural heartland and known as “the grain bowl of India”.
The towers had power supplies and fibre cables cut while some had their generators stolen, officials said.
A source close to Jio, Reliance’s mobile phone enterprise, said more than 1,400 towers had been vandalised up to Sunday. A telecoms industry official said at least 150 more were damaged on Monday.
The office of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said that more than 1,500 communication masts had been damaged or their power supply cut off in the past few days.
The “use of violence could alienate the protesters from the masses, which would be detrimental to the interests of the farming community”, Singh said in the statement.
Reliance, which is owned by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, has not commented on the vandalism. But mobile phone services have been affected in Punjab which has 9,000 towers in all.
Protesters have also blockaded one of Punjab’s biggest cooking oil depots owned by Adani subsidiary Fortune in the Punjab city of Amritsar.
