Reliance Industries on Monday announced that it had no plans to venture into contract farming, acquire farmland anywhere in the country or source farm produce directly from farmers.

The uncommon announcement by the industry group run by Mukesh Ambani is being seen as an attempt to quell the mounting anger against the group after the Narendra Modi government passed three contentious farm laws in September.

Farmers agitating against the bills believe that Reliance, besides the Adani Group, will emerge as one of the principal beneficiaries of the so-called farm sector reforms.

“Reliance Industries Ltd have not done any ‘corporate’ or ‘contract’ farming in the past, and have absolutely no plans to enter this business,” the company said in a media statement.

The conglomerate said it would insist that its suppliers strictly abide by the minimum support price (MSP) mechanism or any other framework that the government implements to provide for remunerative price for farm produce.

The statement from Reliance Industries, the country’s largest private company, comes at a time the farmers’ agitation has crossed 40 days and group company Reliance Jio has seen its telecom assets come under attack and faced an exodus of its subscribers.

In a 637-page petition filed before Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday, Reliance Jio said more than 1,500 telecom towers belonging to the group had been vandalised or rendered inoperative by miscreants, crippling its mobile network in Punjab.

The petition said Jio subscribers were being forced to port to other networks while its employees had received grave threats to their lives and had been forcibly prevented from serving Jio subscribers in the state.

The petition said that vested interests “inimical” to Reliance Jio and its parent RIL had “actively engaged in spreading false rumours to the effect that the petitioner, and its parent company and its affiliates are somehow a beneficiary of recent legislation passed by Parliament, governing marketing of agricultural produce”.

As of October 31, Jio had more than 1.4 crore subscribers in Punjab (about 36 per cent of the telecom subscriber base in the state) and 94 lakh in Haryana (about 34 per cent).

Farmers accused the Reliance group of making self-serving claims to suggest that it had not acquired farmland anywhere in the country.

Hours after Jio submitted its affidavit in the high court, the All-India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), representing 250 farmers’ organisations, said: “The Reliance industry’s affidavit is full of false claims of it not entering the crop market and taking over farm land. In Raigad, Maharashtra, and other places, large tracts of land have been taken over by Reliance and it must return all those before making any false claim.”

Reliance had acquired over 20,000 hectares of farmland in Raigad in 2007 for a special economic zone (not for contract farming) that never really got off the ground.

“Unlike vested interests, Jio has not resorted to any coercive or unlawful measures to win over customers,” RIL said in its media statement, once again amplifying its attack on telecom rivals like Airtel without actually naming them.

Last month, Jio had written to telecom regulator Trai accusing its rivals of running a “vicious and divisive campaign” while urging Jio subscribers to migrate to other networks.

Both Airtel and Vodafone have termed the complaint baseless.

There is no data available to quantify the number of Jio subscribers in the two states who have sought to port out of the network. Media reports suggest that more than 1 lakh subscribers have sought to migrate to competitors.

Recently, some users had taken to Twitter to complain that Jio was not responding to mobile number portability requests. Telecom players are obliged to immediately facilitate requests to move to competing networks.

However, a spokesperson for the Reliance group has denied that the telecom company has tried to block requests to port out of the Jio network.