NEW DELHI: Despite appeals by Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, more than 1,300 telecom towers have been disrupted in Punjab, badly affecting the services in the state.
On 25 December, Punjab Chief Minister’s Office had issued an appeal to farmers not to disrupt telecom services in the state. “Chief Minister @capt_amarinderSingh appeals to farmers not to disrupt state’s telecom services & inconvenience citizens. Chief Minister urges them to show the same restraint & discipline as they’d been exercising at the Delhi border,” Punjab CMO tweeted.
A total of 700 towers were already down by 4 pm on Friday when CM sent out his appeal and CMO issued the WhatsApp. Then an appeal was issued from @CMOPunjab issued 4.54 pm.
Despite the appeal, 1,235 towers (against 700 before the tweet) were downed at 6.30 p.m. on Saturday. Despite this, 400 sites were upped by companies.
As of 8 am on Sunday, 1,338 sites were down and almost 151 sites were down since 8 pm on Saturday.
The towers that are down include those run by Indus Towers, the self owned, self operated towers of Jio, BSNL-owned towers and Jio’s AG-II towers.