Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm in its writ petition in the Punjab & Haryana High Court has said the alleged campaign against the telco began in October and one of the pockets where its telecom infrastructure was targeted was Sangrur, the district that shot to fame in 1987 when a PepsiCo group firm set up its first potato chips plant and pioneered contract farming in the country.
Jio has in the petition alleged the sustained disinformation campaign run by “vested interests”, including through social media channels, has made its business and assets a target of attack and destruction by miscreants at the instigation of the vested interests, purporting to be engaged in public demonstrations and protests against the farm laws.
It further reiterated neither parent Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) or any of the affiliates of RIL have plans to enter into contract or corporate farming.
The petitioner also claimed that none of the Reliance group firms have purchased any agricultural land directly or indirectly anywhere in India for corporate farming and it has no such plans either.
It has said in the petition that over the past few weeks, apart from more than 1,500 of its towers being damaged or rendered inoperative by the miscreants, a number of its stores in Punjab have been “forcibly closed by these miscreants using illegal force and intimidation”.
Jio said in its petition that its tower assets had been sabotaged or destroyed in the districts of Amritsar, Barnala, Bathinda, Chandigarh, Faridkot, Fategarh Sahib, Fazilka, Firozpur, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Moga, Mansa, Mohali, Muktsar, Nawanshahr, Pathankot, Patiala, Ropar, Sangrur and Tarn Taran. The petition also carried photographs and media reports documenting the vandalism in Punjab.
Jio alleged that at Sangrur miscreants disrupted its 4G services. Its affidavit also carried tweets by individuals who had discontinued their Jio connections. The petition said the consequences have not only been borne by Jio but also its 1.4 crore subscribers across Punjab.
Jio has made the state of Punjab through its chief secretary, the Union home affairs ministry and the department of telecommunications as the respondents in the matter.
In the civil writ petition, Jio sought appropriate directions to respondents for investigation into the “well-orchestrated and sustained disinformation campaign” being carried out by the vested interests and miscreants against it.
The petition filed through counsel Aashish Chopra alleged that vested interests "inimical" to the company and RIL are actively engaged in spreading false rumours to the effect that it is a beneficiary of the recent farm legislation passed by Parliament.
Last month, Jio had blamed its telecom rivals and written to Trai where it accused them of running "vicious and divisive campaign’’ and making preposterous claims that migrating Jio mobile numbers to their networks would be an act of support to farmers' protests.