04 January,2021 12:50 PM IST | Mumbai | A Correspondent
A man walks past a signboard of digital services company Jio, also subsidiary of Reliance, on a street in Mumbai. Pic/AFP
The Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), through its subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), in a petition mentioned to be filed in Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday, has sought urgent intervention of government authorities to bring a complete stop to illegal acts of vandalism by miscreants.
"These acts of violence have endangered the lives of thousands of its employees and caused damage and disruption to the vital communications infrastructure, sales and service outlets run by its subsidiaries in the two states," RIL said in a media statement.
It said that the miscreants indulging in vandalism have been instigated and aided by vested interests and their business rivals. "Taking advantage of the ongoing farmers' agitation near the national capital, these vested interests have launched an incessant, malicious and motivated vilification campaign against Reliance, which has absolutely no basis in truth," the statement read.
It further said that the falsehood of the campaign becomes crystal clear from the following irrefutable facts, which we have placed before the High Court. "These facts establish that Reliance has nothing whatsoever to do with the three farm laws currently debated in the country, and in no way benefits from them. As such, the sole nefarious purpose of linking the name of Reliance to these laws is to harm our businesses and damage our reputation," said RIL.
"Reliance Retail Limited (RRL), Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), or any other affiliate of our parent company, i.e., Reliance Industries Limited have not done any 'corporate' or 'contract' farming in the past, and have absolutely no plans to enter this business," added RIL.
RIL stated that neither Reliance nor any of our subsidiaries has purchased any agricultural land, directly or indirectly, in Punjab/Haryana or anywhere else in India, for the purpose of "corporate" or "contract" farming and have absolutely no plans to do so.
According to RIL, Reliance Retail is an unmatched leader in organised retail business in India. It retails products of all categories including food grains and staples, fruits and vegetables, items of daily use, apparels, medicines, electronic products of various brands belonging to independent manufacturers and suppliers in the country. It does not purchase any food grains directly from farmers.
"It has never entered into long-term procurement contracts to gain unfair advantage over farmers or sought that its suppliers' buy from farmers at less than remunerative prices, nor will it ever do so."
"We at Reliance have immense gratitude and the greatest respect for India's kisans, who are the 'ANNA DATA' of 1.3 billion Indians. Reliance and its affiliates are committed to doing everything to enrich and empower them. As customers of their services, we believe in building a strong and equal partnership with Indian farmers on the basis of shared prosperity, inclusive development and an equitable New India," said RIL.
Therefore, it said that Reliance and its affiliates fully share and support the aspiration of Indian farmers to get a fair and profitable price on a predictable basis for what they produce with exemplary hard work, innovation and dedication.
"Reliance seeks significant augmentation of their incomes on a sustainable basis, and pledges to work towards this goal. Indeed, we shall insist on our suppliers to strictly abide by the Minimum Support Price (MSP) mechanism, and/or any other mechanism for a remunerative price for farm produce, as may be determined and implemented by the government," RIL said.
Far from hurting the interests of Indian farmers, the businesses of Reliance have actually benefited them and the Indian public at large, said RIL.
According to IANS, on January 1, RJIL had said that there are "blatant efforts" to sabotage its network in the garb of farmers' protest by the channel partners of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
In letters sent to Anshu Prakash, Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and P.D. Vaghela, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio said that a grave situation has emerged in Punjab and Haryana amid the ongoing farmers' protest.
"As a result of false and frivolous communication that Reliance will be an undue beneficiary of the farm bills passed by Parliament, Jio's telecommunications network is being targeted by the protesters and the same is being disrupted and permanently damaged," Reliance Jio had said.
Reliance Jio has asked the TRAI and DoT to take action against Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel for these unethical and unscrupulous practice of their channel partners. It has also demanded that mobile number portability (MNP) process in Punjab and Haryana be suspended for the time being till the situation stabilises.
It said that the gravity of the situation can be gauged from the fact that there is an outage of 1,504 Jio towers in Punjab which represents 15 per cent of the total number. Similar outages have been reported for 85 Jio towers in Haryana. Reliance Jio said the situation is worsening every hour and it fears that attempts are being made to spread similar situation in more circles.
However, telecom major Bharti Airtel, on January 2, said that Reliance Jio's allegations claiming sabotage of the latter's tower infrastructure by its rivals are baseless and outrageous. In a letter to the Anshu Prakash, Secretary of Department of Telecommunications, Airtel also condemned the disruption of telecom networks and the instances of vandalism.
"The baseless allegation made by Jio that Airtel is behind the farmer agitation to 'sabotage' their network and to force customers to switch to Airtel is therefore simply outrageous," the letter said.
It also said that Jio's annexure to the complaint did not demonstrate any evidence that Airtel has hand in the ongoing issues faced by Jio.
(With inputs from IANS)
