After having provided the misinformed farmers of his state with tacit support to launch an all-out agitation against the Central government regarding the passage of three revolutionary farm laws by India’s parliament in September, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh is now having to deal with a tremendous headache – one which involves fools masquerading as farmers assaulting telecom service provider staff and technicians as they destroy, vandalise and cut power supply to signal transmitting sites.
It must be remembered that the farmers of Punjab, for reasons best known to them, are of the opinion that due to the three farm laws pushed by the Modi government, billionaire industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani will use their non-agricultural firms to usurp large swathes of farmland. In line with the same hilarious perception, farmers, or farm union activists have been vandalising Reliance Jio telecom infrastructure throughout the state in order to send across a message to the devil-incarnate – Mukesh Ambani.
Earlier, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had urged the farmers to show restraint and had politely asked them to stop their buffoonery. Such appeals by the Chief Minister fell in deaf ears, as in the past 24 hours alone, over 176 more telecom towers/signal transmitting sites have been vandalised. With this, the total number of telecom tower sites damaged stood at 1,411, sources told PTI. “Site managers are slapped and abused for trying to persuade protestors from damaging sites,” the news agency further reported.
In his letter to the farmers across the state, Captain had urged them to display a sense of discipline while going about their anti-government demonstrations. “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 CMO statement read.
Captain Amarinder Singh, of course, is now answerable to all those firms who are having their infrastructure vandalised across Punjab by a bunch of arsonists which the Chief Minister and his party seem to support, only because both seem to be baying for the blood of a common enemy in the Modi government. The general public of Punjab, meanwhile, is being highly inconvenienced as telecom services throughout the border state get disrupted.
It will be interesting to see how Captain Amarinder Singh reigns in the goons vandalising telecom towers across the state. Ideally, strict action should be taken by the government on all such elements who seek to disrupt an essential service as crucial as telecommunications. If the Punjab Chief Minister continues dealing with the misinformed farmers with soft hands, they will only be emboldened to carry out their foolish goondaism with a sense of pride.