Sending alarm bells ringing, the farmers protesting against the Centre’s three new farm laws in Punjab have set December 31 as deadline for the people to disconnect themselves from Jio telecom network.
At the same time, The farmers, demanding repealing of three agriculture acts, have given a week’s time to the people to port their numbers to other telecom companies while making it clear that the process of snapping lines would begin afresh from the New Year.
The announcement by the farmers came the day the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has made an appeal to the agitating farmers not to disrupt state’s telecom services and cause inconvenience to the citizens.“We have stopped disconnecting the power supply of mobile towers till December 31. We have asked the people to port their numbers to other companies by then,” said a farmers’ union leader Surjit Singh.
Available information suggests that in the past three days, the farmers have disrupted the power supply and affected the functioning of as many as 200 mobile owners of Reliance-Jio, causing approximately Rs five to 10 crore losses to the telecom company.
As per the report of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), dated December 23, a fall was witnessed in Jio’s “active” connections in Punjab in the month of October.
Jio’s active connections in September 2020 were 66.56 percent, which came down to 65.93 percent in October. Also, as many as 24,000 requests were received in Punjab in September for number portability related to all companies, while the number shoot up to 26,000 on October.
“As a part of the call for a boycott of corporate houses, the farmers request to get the Jio SIMs port to another telecom companies is getting a huge response in Punjab’s rural areas,” said Bharti Kisan Union (Dakaunda) general secretary Jagmohan Singh.Even as the farmers leaders have announced to discontinue their plans to discconct power supply to Jio mobile towers till December 31, several incidents were reported on Friday also.As per reports, BKU Dakaunda's flag was hoisted on a telecom mobile tower in Mandi Kalan village of Bathinda district. Also, some farmers, protesting against the three farm laws in Punjab's Mansa, also shut the power supply to several Reliance Jio towers.“We will not restore the supply until the black laws are repealed…We have stopped power supply of Jio towers.
We will continue to boycott Jio and Reliance. We will not let anybody to run it. Everyone is supporting it. Modi government has brought these laws for the benefit of corporates,” said Avtar Singh, a protesting farmer.
Another protester Manpreet Singh said: “We are opposing Reliance and Jio. Until farm laws are repealed, power supply to these towers will not be restored.”
Notably, the farmers are protesting on different borders of Delhi for nearly a month now against the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.